ANDREA CANEPA: THE PALACIO DE CRISTAL AS A SYMBOLIC BODY
Andrea Canepa intervenes in the Palacio de Cristal at the Museo Reina Sofía with Fardo, an installation consisting of a large tarp inspired by pre-Columbian funerary bundles that transforms the building into a symbolic body, inviting reflection on what is visible and displayed, as well as on preservation and transformation.
Coinciding with the renovation works at the Palacio de Cristal, one of the Museo Reina Sofía’s two venues located in Madrid’s Retiro Park, the museum presents Fardo, an installation by Andrea Canepa (Lima, Peru, 1980) that will envelop the historic building throughout the current year. This new intervention, part of a program of temporary projects, transforms the exterior space through the wrapping of a vast printed tarp that also engages in a dialogue with the architecture, altering its usual presence.
For the creation of Fardo, the artist draws on the funerary bundles of pre-Columbian societies, specifically those of the Paracas culture, which served as body wrappings. This idea becomes a conceptual framework through which the Palacio de Cristal is transformed into a symbolic body, protected by its covering. In developing the visual language of the tarp, Canepa created paintings inspired by ancient textiles, which she then photographed and, once digitized, transferred onto the tarp.
Thus, Fardo emerges as a work of significant conceptual weight, addressing notions of time, place, memory, and the body, while consistently foregrounding the ceremonial and ancestral in its dialogue with the symbolic architecture of the Palacio de Cristal. In doing so, the installation invites a rethinking of concepts such as exhibition and transparency, while also encouraging reflection on what is preserved and what is transformed, through frames that, in a sensory way, both cover and reveal.
Andrea Canepa. Fardo will be on view throughout 2026 at the Museo Reina Sofía’s Palacio de Cristal venue, in Retiro Park, Madrid, Spain.
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