Marina Vargas: Revelations
Curated by Semíramis González
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid
10 February - 4 May 2025
Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum presents Marina Vargas: Revelations, the eighth edition of the “Kora” series, which promotes work by contemporary women artists from a gender perspective. In this project, curated by Semíramis González, Marina Vargas (born Granada, 1980) reveals and draws attention to the contributions and legacy of women who have been silenced throughout history, particularly in the realm of the sacred and spiritual.
Taking Mary Magdalene as the principal axis of her project, Marina Vargas creates a journey in which she explores other female figures who have been relegated to a secondary position in the worlds of art, culture and religion, combining them with words, tarot readings and other interpretative media that form part of the artist’s creative universe, her life story and personal experience.
Revelations has been conceived by Marina Vargas and her curator as a totality in which the artist’s creations, the majority made expressly for the exhibition, establish a dialogue with spaces in the Museo Thyssen and works in its collections, as well as with other loans from institutions such as the Museo Nacional de Escultura. The result is an unprecedented whole, in which space, painting, drawing, sculpture and sound are all involved.
The exhibition comprises four sections, each presided over by a large tarot card. The first of them, Word, features an installation in which different phrases taken from different women who have inspired the artist can be read in sign languages (Spanish and universal). These women include feminist theologians such as Cynthia Bourgeault, artists like Hannah Wilke, historical figures like Joan of Arc and authors such as Kate Millet, while current feminist slogans are also included. The same space displays the sculpture Mary Magdalene (2024), a pair of joined hands that form a triangle symbolising the uterus, a gesture taken from feminist actions. The two works establish a dialogue with the painting Hercules at the Court of Omphale (1537) by Hans Cranach in which hands are particularly important in the depicted scene.
The exhibition continues with the section Vision, which focuses on the process of disease. All the elements in this room allude to the breast cancer which the artist suffered in the past and which has significantly influenced her creative career: the series Mère-Mer (2024), a group of crabs climbing down the wall (in allusion to the astrological symbol of cancer); The Feminine Divine (2024), a tapestry with the Cross of Camargue embroidered on it and on top of it a group of snails, used for divinatory reading in the Afro-Cuban religion and which are part of Vargas' creative process; and Votive Offerings (2022), comprising moulds used for radiotherapy sessions covered in gold. This section concludes with the Tarot card of “The World”, a symbol of rebirth without the need to die.
The third room, Body, is presided over by two Reverse Pietàs: one of them, suspended from the ceiling, forms a contrast with the other cracked one on the floor, which seems to have been opened up to reveal what is concealed and which is the last in a series of seven produced by Vargas in the last decade. These sculptures establish a dialogue with Madonna of the Dry Tree (ca. 1465) by Petrus Christus, a panel in which the Virgin and Child are surrounded by the Tree of Knowledge. Withered since the Original Sin, it blooms again after the conception of Christ. This space culminates with the “Strength” tarot card symbolising all triumphant women.
The exhibition closes with the room Aegyptiaca, dominated by Luis Salvador Carmona’s carving of Saint Mary of Egypt (1734-1766), also known as Maria Aegyptiaca, from the Museo Nacional de Escultura. This final room in the exhibition, which is completely black, establishes a dialogue between Mary of Egypt and a photograph of Vargas after her mastectomy entitled Noli Me Tangere. Incredulity (2020). That work is in turn accompanied by the panel of Mary Magdalene by Derick Baegert of 1477-78. The exhibition concludes with a series of drawings of different tarot cards created by Vargas as part of her working process. The voice of María Botto, who played Mary Magdalene in the film Risen (2016), reads out the meaning of each of them.
Revelations, in the words of its curator Semíramis González, is "a unique exhibition by Marina Vargas, but also an investigation of many of the issues that have shaped her corpus of artistic creation and research throughout her career. The rupture of the canon is presented not only by the fact of naming women who have remained hidden within the context of the sacred (regardless of religion) but also due to her interest in dismantling patriarchal structures in the history of art which have constructed a reifying image of women, relegating them to the margins of the account."
MARINA VARGAS (born Granada, 1980) lives and works in Madrid. Vargas graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Granada in 2003 and subsequently undertook the doctoral courses at that university and a Masters in Production and Research into Artistic Languages in 2011. Her work encompasses a range of formats, including photography, sculpture, and painting. Within her research Vargas reassesses the models and archetypes inherited from Western representational traditions, questioning visual codes formulated in the past to define artistic languages. Her work is represented in numerous institutional collections, including those of: Artium, Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo, Vitoria-Gasteiz; CA2M, Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Móstoles, Madrid; CAAM–Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria; Colección Fundación Canaria para el Desarrollo de la Pintura (FCDP), Las Palmas de Gran Canaria; CAC–Málaga, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga; Colección María Cristina Masaveu; Centre d’Art Contemporain Essaouira, Ifitry, Morocco; Benetton Foundation Collection, Italy; Colección Fundación Enaire; the EWA Art Collection, Miami; and the Sara Vance Waddell Collection, USA, among others.
Curator: Semíramis González
Coordinator: Laura Andrada, Curatorial Department, Museo Nacional ThyssenBornemisza
Publication: Catalogue with texts by Semíramis González
The exhibition will travel to the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Querétaro (Mexico), where it will be shown from September 2025 to January 2026.
MUSEO NACIONAL THYSSEN-BORNEMISZA
Paseo del Prado, 8. 28014, Madrid
