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Eli Cortiñas: The Machine Dreams of Smoke
Eli Cortiñas revisits her 2016 work on cinema, museums and colonial imagery, adding new AI-generated installations that critique how algorithms and institutions perpetuate power imbalances.
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Tarzan swings through a jungle that was never there. Early sound films shot their actors in a Hollywood studio and ran ethnographic footage of Africa behind them. In The Most Given of Givens (2016), Eli Cortiñas cuts those scenes across three screens with Jurassic Park, Star Wars, an Acropolis under construction and Moustapha Alassane's anticolonial cinema, in ten minutes.
The second work is new, in the antechamber of Espacio 1 in the Sabatini Building. You walk past vitrines painted the pastel shades of a chroma-key screen and left empty, for colonial-era objects awaiting restitution, under wallpaper of AI-generated and stock images of hands touching and sorting things. The smoke of the title is Cortiñas's image for what museums and algorithms hide.
Two works and a ten-minute video make this a short stop on a collection visit. Tickets are €12, and entry is free Monday to Saturday 19:00 to 21:00 and Sunday 12:30 to 14:30.
Look for
The Most Given of Givens (2016)
Three screens run a ten-minute montage of early Tarzan films, Jurassic Park and Star Wars, cut against Moustapha Alassane's anticolonial cinema.
The rear-projected jungle
Look for ethnographic footage of Africa playing as scenery behind actors who were filmed in a Hollywood studio.
The empty vitrines
Display cases in pastel chroma-key colours stand empty, a stand-in for colonial-era objects awaiting restitution.
The wallpaper of hands
AI-generated and stock images cover the antechamber walls, showing hands touching, classifying and surveying objects, alongside cut-metal pieces.
Good for
- An Hour Or Less
- Evening Visits
- Nerding Out
Skip if
You want objects: the vitrines are deliberately empty and the main work is a video.
With kids
Under-18s are always free with ID at the ticket office.
Also at Museo Reina Sofía
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Image credits
7
- Eli Cortiñas: The Machine Dreams of SmokeMuseo Reina Sofía © Eli Cortiñas, VEGAP, Madrid, 2026
- We Are Nature: An Immersive Audiovisual ExperienceCourtesy of CaixaForum Madrid
- Museo Reina SofíaMuseoreinasofia, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- CaixaForum MadridDraceane / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Museo del PradoEmilio J. Rodríguez Posada (Emijrp), via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
- Museo Thyssen-BornemiszaLuis García (Zaqarbal), CC BY-SA 3.0
- Museo NavalFernando, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0