Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova (+MSUM), Ljubljana

23. April – 13. September 2026, Opening: Thursday, April 23, 2026, at 7 p.m.

Curated by: Bettina Knaup, Iva Kovač and Mónica Mayer

With works by: Milijana Babić, selma banich, Laura Anderson Barbata, C.A.D.A., Graciela Carnevale, Ana Čigon, Diamela Eltit, Exterra XX, Else Gabriel, Regina José Galindo, Anna Bella Geiger, Lydia Hamann & Kaj Osteroth, María Teresa Hincapié, Ana Victoria Jiménez, Magali Lara, María Evelia Marmolejo, Mónica Mayer, Lorena Orozco, Giulia Palladini & Rodolfo Suárez Molnar, Polvo de Gallina Negra (Maris Bustamante & Mónica Mayer), Producciones y Milagros Agrupación Feminista (Rotmi Enciso & Ina Riaskov), Jesusa Rodríguez and Liliana Felipe, Maja Smrekar, Gabriele Stötzer, Cecilia Vicuña, Lorena Wolffer. 

„For me, working with the archive is an act of self-defence against indifference, invisibilization, and the censorship caused by ignorance or by power.“ – Mónica Mayer

The exhibition Archival Chain Reactions emerged from a collaborative project dedicated to connecting and activating important yet precarious archives of feminist art. It brings together Pinto mi Raya (Mexico City), an archive built by the artists Mónica Mayer and Víctor Lerma, focusing on experimental art production and writing since the 1970s with a particular emphasis on performance and feminist artists; the project re.act.feminism (Berlin), which has been travelling as a living performance archive across Europe in several instalments since 2008; and City of Women (Ljubljana), with its significant, but dispersed archive accumulated over 31 years of festival and programme activities.

Rather than viewing the archive solely as a static repository, Archival Chain Reactions highlights it as a vital, performative infrastructure for contemporary art, that requires continuous care, maintenance, and exchange. The exhibition has been developed through a yearlong dynamic dialogue between the three archives, focussing on some selected works and documents and a set of methods – fostering mutual relations, resonances and effects – which we have termed “archival chain reactions”. Methods that can be encountered across the three archives are infiltrating and lubricating, nesting and anchoring or travelling and circulating.

A project by: cross links e.V. Berlin & Association City of Women, Ljubljana

Funded by: Visual Arts Project Fund of the Goethe-Institut; City of Women (Municipality of Ljubljana, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia); Culture Moves Europe, a project funded by the European Union; cross links e.V. Berlin

Made in collaboration with Moderna galerija Ljubljana and Goethe-Institut Ljubljana.