Exhibitions
The female body in comics takes the floor at Masnou
'Bodies that Talk', the exhibition curated by Marika Vila, explores more than a century of illustration and comics by women to show how artists have challenged stereotypes, recovered their own story and transformed the representation of the female body.
This Friday, July 10, at 6 p.m., the Espai Casinet del Masnou inaugurates Bodies that Talk. Representations of the Body in Comic Book Authors. 1910-2022 , an exhibition that reviews more than a hundred years of representation of the female body through the eyes of puppeteers, illustrators and comic book authors. The inauguration will feature a guided tour by Marika Vila, curator of the exhibition and one of the great specialists in the study of women as objects and subjects within the universe of comics.
The proposal traces the evolution of the image of the female body from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, focusing on how the authors have dismantled the patriarchal imaginaries that for decades reduced the female body to a stereotype, a gender role or a commercial advertisement. At the same time, the exhibition shows how, over the years, these creators have conquered spaces of expressive freedom until they turned the body into a territory of protest, emancipation and diversity.
Based on the work of forty female authors, Bodies That Talk traces more than a century of illustration and comics in Catalonia and constructs a story that connects artistic practice, historical context and social transformation. The journey delves into the timid female presence during the republican period, into the silence imposed by the dictatorship, into the cracks opened by the avant-gardes of the late 20th century and into the emergence of new subjectivities of the new millennium: multiple, fluid and diverse identities that find in comics a space for affirmation.
The project is the result of the expertise of Marika Vila, a graduate in Humanities, a master's degree in Women's Studies and a doctorate in Construction and Representation of Cultural Gender Identities from the University of Barcelona. Recently awarded the Grand Prize of the Barcelona Comics Fair, Vila has developed a pioneering career in the critical analysis of female representation in comics, and this exhibition is a particularly revealing synthesis of this.
After visiting eight facilities of the Local Museums Network between 2024 and 2025 and gathering 11,705 visitors, the exhibition now arrives at El Masnou in a reduced version. This adaptation incorporates facsimile reproductions of the illustrations that were part of the first tour and maintains, in the display cases, a good part of the original documentation. The exhibition is organized by the Cultural Heritage Office of the Culture Area of the Barcelona Provincial Council and the Palau Mercader Museum in Cornellà, and can be visited at El Masnou until September 27.
The exhibition is divided into five thematic areas, linked to the social and cultural changes of each period, and incorporates a sixth space dedicated to digital artists and emerging authors, who work from new technologies, social networks, self-publishing and online self-publishing. This last section opens the story to the present and highlights new ways of narrating the body, identity and difference.
The programming at El Masnou will be completed with several parallel activities designed to delve deeper into the contents of the exhibition and expand its public reach. On Saturday, July 18, at 11 a.m., an animated visit for all audiences will take place. On Saturday, September 19, also at 11 a.m., illustrator and comic book author Raquel Gu will lead the workshop "Dibuixades i diverses", aimed at both adult audiences —from 16 years old— and family audiences. Finally, on Thursday, September 24, at 7 p.m., Marika Vila will offer a conference linked to the exhibition, with sign language interpreter service.
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