The label 'women's crafts' functioned as a ceiling
In Madrid, the Reina Sofía Museum has opened a centennial retrospective for Catalan artist Aurèlia Muñoz, whose decades of work in macramé and textile installation were long dismissed under the reductive label of 'women's crafts.' Her knotted, suspended forms — kite-birds and flying books that transformed architectural space — were never less than art, even when the institutions that shape art history refused to say so. This exhibition is less a discovery than a reckoning: an acknowledgment that the boundaries drawn around certain kinds of making were always about power, not quality.
- For decades, Aurèlia Muñoz worked at the intersection of formal ambition and institutional indifference, her macramé installations occupying space that the art world refused to take seriously.
- The label 'women's crafts' functioned as a closed door — no matter how inventive or spatially rigorous the work, it was systematically sorted into a lesser category.
- Her iconic kite-birds and flying books challenged that dismissal in material terms, creating sculptural works that demanded to be read as art objects rather than decorative gestures.
- The Reina Sofía's centennial retrospective gathers the full scope of her practice, bringing long-marginalized fiber and textile work into the institutional frame it was always owed.
- The exhibition signals a broader shift: art historical institutions are beginning to reckon with how gender shaped what counted as art, and whose work was allowed to matter.
El Museo Reina Sofía de Madrid ha inaugurado una retrospectiva del centenario dedicada a Aurèlia Muñoz, artista catalana cuya carrera encarna uno de los puntos ciegos más persistentes del mundo del arte: el rechazo sistemático del trabajo textil como mera artesanía, especialmente cuando las manos que lo realizaban eran de mujeres.
Muñoz trabajó durante décadas en macramé, fibra e instalación textil en un momento en que estos materiales cargaban con un estigma casi insuperable. La etiqueta de «artesanía femenina» funcionaba como un techo invisible: una forma de decir que ciertos modos de hacer —por muy inventivos, espacialmente ambiciosos o formalmente rigurosos que fueran— pertenecían a una categoría distinta de lo que se consideraba arte. Muñoz se negó a aceptar ese límite. Desarrolló un lenguaje visual propio a través de fibras anudadas y formas tejidas, creando lo que el museo describe como «pájaros cometa» y «libros voladores»: obras escultóricas que ocupaban y transformaban el espacio arquitectónico de maneras que exigían ser tomadas en serio.
La exposición reúne el conjunto de su práctica artística. Las instalaciones de macramé que se exhiben entrelazan fibra y espacio de formas que desafían la percepción del espectador sobre cómo puede moverse la materia en una sala. Los pájaros cometa —quizás sus piezas más icónicas— sugieren a la vez la ingravidez del vuelo y la estructura deliberada del oficio, sin elegir entre ambas. Los libros voladores, otro motivo recurrente, materializan la idea del lenguaje y el conocimiento en movimiento, suspendidos en el aire de la galería.
Lo que hace significativa esta retrospectiva no es solo que celebre a una artista ignorada, aunque lo hace. Representa una revisión más amplia de cómo el canon de la historia del arte ha tratado a las mujeres que trabajaban con fibras, textiles y otros materiales codificados durante mucho tiempo como domésticos o femeninos. La decisión del Reina Sofía de montar esta exposición no es un gesto de corrección caritativa, sino un reconocimiento de que la categoría de «artesanía femenina» fue siempre una ficción: una manera de gestionar un trabajo que no encajaba en las jerarquías establecidas. Las fibras anudadas y las formas suspendidas de Muñoz nunca fueron artesanía en el sentido peyorativo. Siempre fueron arte. El museo simplemente se pone al día con lo que su obra lleva diciendo desde el principio.
The Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid has mounted a centennial retrospective for Aurèlia Muñoz, a Catalan artist whose career represents one of the art world's most persistent blind spots: the systematic dismissal of textile work as mere craft rather than serious art, especially when the hands doing the work belonged to women.
Muñoz spent decades working in macramé, fiber, and textile installation at a time when these materials carried an almost insurmountable stigma. The label "women's crafts" functioned as a ceiling, a way of saying that certain kinds of making—no matter how inventive, how spatially ambitious, how formally rigorous—belonged in a different category altogether from what counted as art. Muñoz refused to accept that boundary. She developed a distinctive visual language using knotted fibers and woven forms, creating what the museum describes as "kite-birds" and "flying books"—sculptural works that occupied and transformed architectural space in ways that demanded to be taken seriously as art objects, not decorative accessories.
The exhibition, which opened to mark what would have been her hundredth year, gathers the full scope of her practice. The works on view include her signature macramé installations, pieces that interweave fiber and space in ways that challenge the viewer's sense of how material can move through a room. The kite-birds in particular have become iconic—forms that suggest both the weightlessness of flight and the deliberate structure of craft, refusing to choose between the two. Flying books, another recurring motif, literalize the idea of language and knowledge in motion, suspended in the gallery air.
What makes this retrospective significant is not simply that it celebrates an overlooked artist, though it does that. It represents a broader reassessment of how the art historical canon has treated women working in fiber, textiles, and other materials long coded as domestic or feminine. For decades, Muñoz's work existed in a kind of professional limbo—respected by those who knew it, but systematically excluded from the narratives that shaped how art history understood itself. She was making ambitious, formally inventive work at the exact moment when the art world was most invested in dismissing such work as something other than art.
The Reina Sofía's decision to mount this centennial show signals a shift in how institutions are beginning to reckon with that history. It is not a gesture of charity or correction, though it corrects something real. Rather, it is an acknowledgment that the category of "women's crafts" was always a fiction—a way of managing work that didn't fit neatly into existing hierarchies. Muñoz's knotted fibers and suspended forms were never craft in the diminishing sense. They were always art. The museum is simply catching up to what her work has been saying all along.
Citações Notáveis
The category of 'women's crafts' was always a fiction—a way of managing work that didn't fit neatly into existing hierarchies.— Institutional reassessment reflected in the Reina Sofía's curatorial approach
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why did it take a hundred years for the art world to take Muñoz seriously?
Because textile work, especially macramé, carried the weight of being associated with women's domestic labor. Once something gets coded that way, it becomes almost invisible to institutions that define themselves through exclusion.
But her work is formally ambitious—the kite-birds, the spatial installations. Couldn't that have broken through?
You'd think so. But the category itself was the problem. Even when the work was undeniably sophisticated, the material and the gender of the maker conspired to keep it at arm's length from what counted as serious art.
So this exhibition is about more than just Muñoz?
Exactly. It's a reckoning with how institutions have organized knowledge about art. Every woman working in fiber, textiles, ceramics—all of them were caught in the same trap. The Reina Sofía is saying that trap was never justified.
What does her work actually do in a room? How does it change the space?
The kite-birds seem to float. The flying books suspend language itself. She's using fiber to make you feel weightlessness and structure at the same time. It's not decoration—it's a complete reimagining of what sculpture can be.
And now, a hundred years later, we're finally seeing it?
Now we're finally admitting we were wrong to look away.