The National Museum of Anthropology / Madrid presents A New Story, an exhibition of photographs by Isabel Muñoz. François Cheval, the curator of the exhibition, presents it as follows:
A photographer, Isabel Muñoz, went into the archaeological sites, the excavation sites of Karahan Tepe, Göbekli Tepe, in Turkey. These excavations not only renew our knowledge but literally leave us stunned. Faced with these disconcerting remains, faced with these monumental megaliths, a hallucinatory vision, between homages to the unknown and works of art, photography cannot simply document. She bows before these larger-than-life scenes to begin a dialogue with the elders. Who were these hunter-gatherers, these organizers of rituals, these builders of symbols, with their T-shaped pillars and their iconography linked to the wild?
Isabel Muñoz enters their sanctuaries. At night, she waits for the community celebrations to begin. Why not imagine that the materials displayed on the prints cannot be safe conducts. Through photography, she allows herself to join this ritual community to which she knows she belongs. All of Isabel Muñoz’s work is totemic. Faced with these images, we are not witnessing an aesthetic event but a story whose ambition is the sign of our proximity to the “guardians of the other world”!
By slipping between these pillers, Isabel Muñoz receives a surplus of power which she transmits to us, image after image. Photography is more than a substitute, more than a mediation, it brings us closer to the limits of transcendence.
François Cheval
Isabel Muñoz : A New Story
Until January 19, 2025
National Museum of Anthropology / Madrid
C. de Alfonso XII, 68, Retiro
28014 Madrid, Spain
