Eli Cortiñas: The Machine Dreams of Smoke, at the Reina Sofía Museum

Who decided how we see Africa? Eli Cortiñas (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1979) tracks down the answer in an unexpected place: the Tarzan films. 🎬🔥

The Reina Sofía invited her to revisit «The Most Given of Givens» (2016), her three-channel video installation recently added to the collection.

🎨 ELI CORTIÑAS: THE MACHINE DREAMS OF SMOKE

📅 Until 8 March 2027

🕐 Monday and Wednesday to Saturday, 10 am to 9 pm · Sunday, 10 am to 2.30 pm · Closed on Tuesdays

📍 Reina Sofía Museum, Sabatini building, Space 1 · C/ de Santa Isabel, 52

🎟️ General admission €12 · Includes the Collections and temporary exhibitions

🖼️ The exhibition

Working with found footage, she shows how Hollywood adventure films used ethnographic images shot in Africa as mere backdrops, through rear projection, and so built a colonial image of its peoples.

The exhibition extends more than a decade of research into the history of cinema, of museums and of digital culture, and into who decides which bodies and stories deserve to be seen.

🏛️ Planning your visit

Entry is free on Mondays and Wednesday to Saturday from 7 to 9 pm, and on Sundays from 12.30 to 2.30 pm, for individual visitors only. If you already have a ticket, the museum recommends entering through the Nouvel building (Ronda de Atocha, 2).

ℹ️ Good to know: Closed on 24, 25 and 31 December and on 1 and 6 January.

✨ Tarzan, taken apart frame by frame.