Exhibitions
Marcel·lí Antúnez brings Natura Centrum Est to the MNAC as a collective celebration of nature and living art
The artist claims the popular and festive origin of his work in a large-format exhibition that transforms the Oval Room into a participatory and immersive space, from the street to the museum.
The new exhibition by Catalan artist Marcel·lí Antúnez, entitled Natura Centrum Est , claims the need to place nature back at the center. It is a large-format proposal that can be seen at the MNAC from December 20, 2025 to January 6, 2026. Natura Centrum Est brings together curtains and objects from actions, installations and murals created by Marcel·lí Antúnez Roca with the participation of diverse and heterogeneous people and groups, from 2014 to the present. The scale and singularity of the exhibited pieces, initially conceived for public space or street scenes, acquire a new reading in the Oval Room.
The ten modules and the giant figure of Vulcà, created for the Fargabudell action (2014), articulate hundreds of objects, among which the eyelid curtains and the gigantic drawings stand out which, in the manner of pop-up books, transform their appearance when activated.
The exceptional size of the work allows it to be shown in its full magnitude in the Oval Room of the MNAC and invites the public to fully immerse themselves in the artist's creative universe.
With this exhibition, Antúnez also emphasizes the collective dimension. "The center of all things is nature, and screens turn us into prisoners of the algorithm. With this propaganda format —made with wood and paper— we want to reclaim the historical moment we are living in, to make a comeback and touch the earth with our hands," explained the artist during the presentation of the exhibition this Friday.
Another central axis of the exhibition is the set of posters and propaganda elements created by Antúnez. This corpus, formed by sculptures, slogans and hand-painted images, functions both as a plastic object and as a tool for collective mobilization. Despite being presented in a museum setting, the daily activations preserve their original energy and functionality.
The pieces designed to be worn by the participants, which revisit the folkloric and ritual imagery from a contemporary perspective, evoke popular traditions—such as the iconography of Holy Week—to transform them into a festive, participatory and protesting language.
The combination of these three areas—the scale of the work, the propaganda objects, and the reinterpretation of folk imagery—gives the exhibition its own, warm, and approachable personality, inviting the public to explore various forms of experience. Some pieces are activated in the framework of workshops and walks and are experienced directly by visitors, while others are presented for strictly museum-like contemplation.
This ephemeral installation celebrates nature, community and art as shared and utopian experiences, and offers a unique opportunity to immerse themselves in a dreamlike and participatory universe, of which the public can be a part through creative workshops for the whole family, conceived and animated by Antúnez himself.
"It seems like it's a museum piece, but I didn't want to lose the essence that all of these are things produced on the street, in a celebration," Antúnez explained about the decision to take the exhibition to another expressive level.
