Big Time Sensuality:
Eva Fàbregas at Hamburger Bahnhof
Barcelona-based artist’s Eva Fàbregas’s monumental site-specific installation at Hamburger Bahnhof challenges conventional notions of sculpture and explores themes of desire, love, intimacy, and representation. The exhibition, her largest solo show to date, transforms the historic main hall into a realm of seemingly natural growth, evoking associations of parasitism, and uncontrollable growth.
Fàbregas delves into the mechanisms of desire and the eroticism of material objects through her use of elastic, inflatable materials to create organic-looking sculptures, blurring the lines between organic and inorganic matter. Her works elicit ambiguous emotions and impressions, challenging dichotomies and representing something not present.
The exhibition interweaves themes of intimacy, accessibility, and representation, with sculptures climbing the steel girders of the former train station. The biomorphic sculptures, made of stretchable Lycra and containing inflatable balls, create a reciprocal and collective process of forming and informing. The works seem to breathe life into the space, inviting viewers to engage tactilely and somatically with the art.
Fàbregas’s practice critiques representation and traditional sculptural forms, encouraging us to imagine new bodies, desires, and affects beyond norms. The sculptures play with materials, assemblage, and kinetics, influenced by art history and references to other artists. Her art aligns with the speculative science fiction of Butler and Le Guin and the writings of Preciado, advocating for a community defined by tolerance, diversity, and responsible power use.
The installation at Hamburger Bahnhof challenges established frameworks and rules, inviting viewers to critically confront norms and hierarchies. Fàbregas’s sensual and humorous approach seduces viewers into tactile engagement and sensory interaction with the art, forming somatic relationships and welcoming the “other” with imagination and appreciation.
Open until 14th January 2024, Devouring Lovers, offers a sensuous and representation-critical experience. It encourages viewers to explore materiality, and the interconnectedness of human and non-human worlds.



Written by Fabrizio Mifsud Soler.
www.smb.museum
Images courtesy of Eva Fàbregas, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart / Foto: Jacopo La Forgia
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