Exhibitions

Ana Laura Aláez Sculpture Pavilion: Shelter and Exposure

Leon, Spain

A reinterpretation of Sculpture Pavilion (2008), one of the most monumental works in the MUSAC Collection. Ana Laura Aláez turns the pavilion into a body, a shelter, and a question: what does it mean to inhabit art?

ANA LAURA ALÁEZ. Pabellón de escultura (2008). MUSAC Collection

Image credit

ANA LAURA ALÁEZ. Pabellón de escultura (2008). © MUSAC Collection

Meet the artist

ArtLovers Tip

Move around it slowly and ask yourself where you feel protected — and where you feel exposed. The power of Aláez’s pavilion is that it turns sculpture into a physical condition: not just something in front of you, but something that changes how your body understands space.

Exhibition Highlights - What you'll see

Contemporary sculpture, installation, architectural sculpture, body-based practice, gender perspective and new sculptural languages.

Sculpture Pavilion: Shelter and Exposure revisits Sculpture Pavilion, originally presented at MUSAC in 2008 and now reactivated as part of the museum’s 2026 programme.

Aláez’s work often moves between sculpture, installation, photography and the body, challenging traditional ideas of what sculpture should be and how viewers relate to space. Her practice has been linked to new sculptural languages and to a gender-aware rethinking of materials, space and presence.

You’re watching:

  • A monumental sculptural structure from the MUSAC Collection
  • A work that behaves like architecture, body and object at once
  • A pavilion that suggests both protection and vulnerability
  • Sculpture expanded into space, scale and physical experience
  • A return to one of Aláez’s key works, seen from a new present

The title matters: shelter and exposure. The work is not only about occupying a space, but about the tension between being protected and being visible, between hiding and appearing, between body and structure.

Worth the trip

If you’re interested in sculpture that becomes an environment.

This exhibition matters because it brings back a major work by Ana Laura Aláez, an artist who has helped expand the language of contemporary Spanish sculpture through body, desire, space, identity and material experimentation.

If you are visiting León or building a contemporary art route in northern Spain. MUSAC is one of Spain’s key contemporary art museums, and this project allows you to experience sculpture not as an isolated object, but as a place you physically negotiate.

How to experience it

Don’t stand outside the work mentally — think of it as a space you enter.

Notice how your body changes the scale of the sculpture.

Pay attention to the tension in the title: shelter versus exposure.

Ask what kind of protection the pavilion offers — and what it reveals.

Think about sculpture as something that can behave like architecture, clothing, skin or stage.

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