Seba Calfuqueo. Cautín: a Mapuche river at the Thyssen Museum

A river that rises in the ocean and flows into the sky. Mapuche artist Seba Calfuqueo presents her first solo exhibition in Europe at the Thyssen, devoted to the Cautín river in southern Chile. 🎨🌊

It is organised by the museum and TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, with the Centro Cultural La Moneda in Santiago. Curated by Marina Avia Estrada.

🎨 SEBA CALFUQUEO. CAUTÍN

📅 6 October 2026 to 17 January 2027

🕐 Tuesday to Friday and Sunday, 10 am to 7 pm · Saturday, 10 am to 11 pm · Monday, 12 noon to 4 pm

📍 Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, level -1 galleries · Paseo del Prado, 8

🎟️ General admission €14 · Free on Mondays 12 noon to 4 pm and Saturdays 9 to 11 pm

🌊 The exhibition

The Cautín crosses the Araucanía, part of Wallmapu, the ancestral land of the Mapuche people. A land shaped by successive colonisations, from evangelising missions to today's privatisation of water.

Calfuqueo (Santiago de Chile, 1991) presents it as a living territory of rocks, frogs, plants, protective spirits and people. She tells it through ceramics of endemic species, animations revisiting Mapuche stories, embroidered paintings based on historical archives and a video performance featuring her own body.

🏛️ New work

Every piece is a new commission from TBA21, the result of several years of research on the river. The route is cyclical, running against the current.

ℹ️ Good to know: on 24 and 31 December the museum closes at 3 pm, and it is closed on 25 December and 1 January. Under-18s go free.

✨ Another way of looking at a river, and at time.