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The Santa Mònica presents its 2026 programme
The Santa Mònica presents the programme for 2026, a year in which it wants to deepen its line of work based on experimentation, new production and the collectivisation of artistic processes. The project is thus consolidated with a model that is committed to participatory formats and critical content that challenge citizens and reclaim art as a tool for thought, debate and shared experimentation.
The season will revolve around two major exhibition series with international reach, the three regular programming series in the Sala Bar and research, artistic residencies, mediation and education programmes. The Santa Mònica thus reaffirms its role as a space for meeting, creation and community, while consolidating its presence on the Catalan art scene and strengthening its links with international networks and institutions.
Two major exhibitions to explore the imaginaries and tensions of the contemporary world
The season will be structured around two major exhibition cycles that will address key issues of our present through critical perspectives and hybrid formats.
The first cycle will begin in March with The Assault of Illusion (18.03.2026 - 27.09.2026), an exhibition curated by Enric Puig Punyet and co-produced with the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid that explores art as a tool of deception, illusion and the construction of realities. Through concepts such as post-truth, the dynamics of power and the mechanisms that sustain the hegemonic creation of fictions, the exhibition will propose a critical journey through the artistic techniques that have fed both our desire and perception of the world. At a time marked by deepfakes and artificial intelligence, the proposal asks to what extent art can and should assume the role of revealing and questioning contemporary manipulation devices. The exhibition will present some twenty works, mostly newly produced, by local and international artists such as Anish Kapoor, AA Murakami, Aneta Grzeszykowska, Berndnaut Smilde, Fabian Knecht, Leandro Erlich, Núria Güell, Mans O + Joan Sandoval, Xesca Salvà and Lucrecia Dalt, among others.
Boom Crash Candy Crush (29.10.2026 - 31.01.2027), curated by Joana Moll, will make up the second major exhibition series of the year. The project analyses how everyday technology – from games and interfaces to digital platforms – inserts logics of militarisation and control into our bodies and behaviours. The exhibition will bring together some twenty new and existing works by artists such as Aram Bartholl, Mediengruppe Bitnik, Hito Steyerl, Shona Illingworth, ¥€$Si Perse and Mario Santamaría, among others, to question the devices with which technological capitalism conditions perceptions, gestures and forms of relationship in everyday life
A regular experimental and choral programme in the Sala Bar
This 2026, the Santa Mònica will continue the weekly programming series Tuesdays of video, Wednesdays of Soul and Body and Thursdays of voice and word organised into three blocks: winter, spring and fall. In total, a hundred or so proposals – screenings, concerts, performances, recitals, readings and small-format experimental proposals – will be offered at no charge on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7 pm in the Sala Bar.
Inspired by club culture, the three series aim to be a relaxed and personal regular hangout where audiences, creators, programmers, art lovers and the merely curious can discover risky and unique proposals that are difficult to find in other cultural spaces. The programme is being curated by 31 artistic collectives, creators and visiting organisations.
Tuesdays of video present audiovisual proposals that explore video as a space for rehearsal and experimentation. The series, which reaches its fifth edition in 2026, will include the proposals of eight collectives and three schools: OVNI, Habitual Video Team (FLUX Summa), Hamaca, Panòptic, Dones Visuals, Mostra de Cinema Àrab i Mediterrani de Catalunya (MCAMC), Mostra Internacional de Films de Dones de Barcelona (MIFDB), KonickTheatre/ECOSS, Institut d’Estudis Fotogràfics de Catalunya, Escola Massana and the BAU Centre Universitari d’Arts i Disseny.
Wednesdays of Sound and Body, dedicated to proposals that explore music, movement and the body, will also celebrate its fifth edition in 2026. It will bring together the proposals of 10 collectives and one of the centre's resident laboratories: Mixtur, L’Afluent, Sâlmon, Taller de Músics, BCN ImproFest, laBastida, Ocells al Cap, Africa Moment, CRA’P – Pràctiques de Creació i Recerca Artística, BONE Experimental and the Santa Mònica Body and movement laboratory.
Thursdays of voice and Word material, with poetry readings, performative readings and other unique proposals. The series will present sessions curated by nine local creators and entities: Sònia Moya, Carla Rovira, Mar Nicolás (mardeproduccions), Marta Pol i Rigau, Veus Lliures, a cobert, PEN Català, Sodepau and BCN ImproFes.
Research, mediation and cooperation: an active and connected Santa Mònica
The Santa Mònica continues to develop a research and mediation ecosystem that articulates its internal processes and reinforces its public role.
Les Mòniques, the 21 artists in residence grouped into seven guilds – Communication, Digitisation, Publishing, Education, Spaces, Gastronomy and Participation – will continue to generate prototypes of devices for artistic mediation that enrich the programming and connect with the public.
In 2026, a new international grant will be offered to a Palestinian artist, in collaboration with the TEJA Network, which is scheduled to be held annually and is aimed at supporting creators in emergency situations.
In parallel, eight research groups and laboratories in residence at the centre will continue to test new models of mediation, institutional formats and relations with audiences. They will work on issues related to accessibility, mental health, the memory of the centre, critical approaches to toxicity and colonialism in relation to future exhibitions, audiovisual research, explorations of body and movement, and anti-racist and transinclusive processes centred on the decolonisation of knowledge.
The Santa Mònica also wants to maintain its cooperation network with the neighbourhood, the city and the country, working with some thirty entities in community, mediation and education projects and consolidating relations of sustained collaboration throughout 2026. Among these projects is Sojornar, which celebrates its fifth edition with a collective review process together with the Escola Drassanes, agents and participants from past editions to consolidate the accumulated learning and reinforce the continuity of the project.
Other outstanding actions include the fourth edition of the climate shelter, an ephemeral installation, selected by public call, which will transform the centre's terrace into a place of refuge for the public and neighbours during the hottest months of the year.
This ecosystem of research and mediation is completed with Situation (making), the training programme that gives participants the opportunity to observe and analyse, from the inside, the collective creation processes behind the centre's exhibition series and unique methodology.
