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Women and gender-diverse individuals facing situations of violence and vulnerability are not commonly invited to exhibit at city museums. Museums, like other cultural spaces, often remain inaccessible and out of reach for those of us existing outside the margins of a conventional society.

At Metzineres, we continuously seek out the cracks in the system through which we can sneak in. Thanks to the years of skill and determination, on February 21st, twelve works created by the Metzineres were displayed on the walls of the tower of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA) for an entire day. Pretty cool, right?

Passersby, some by chance and friends we had invited, stared attentively for a long while. The pieces conveyed various ways of imagining a possible and utopian Raval, our neighborhood—a unique place where our existences are not constantly questioned and criminalized, as is the case elsewhere.

The artworks were admired, photographed, and praised. Some of us were there to witness it firsthand. We were thrilled and pleasantly surprised by this recognition, and it simultaneously gave us the strength to keep dreaming big. "From here to the MOMA!"—as one of our colleagues exclaimed while laughing, referring to the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

This exhibition became possible within the framework of the exhibition '108 Days' by the artist Lydia Ourahmame. It is a large, participative, and vindicative work in which 108 collectives participated (one per day) with various proposals, including talks, films, performances, and other actions.

Hopefully, one day an event like this will not be considered an act of subversion and resistance. Hopefully, it will become entirely normal for people like us to express our feelings through any form of art and share them with the world, having finally managed to decolonize and depatriarchalize these spaces."

Photos by Andre Gaetano [Metzineres Photographer]