MARÍA MEDEM. Juego infinito de cuerdas bajo el sol

A sun, a wolf, water. Eyes that observe us and hands that interlock to invite us to play a string game are some of the graphic elements that parasitise the museum architecture and immerse us in the attractive universe of this artist for whom colours and their gradients are the vital tools of her practice. 

In this work titled Juego infinito de cuerdas bajo el sol (Infinite String Game Under the Sun), María Medem doesn't just occupy the walls with some of her drawings. She has created an installation based on different textiles that will occupy the museum’s stairwells and library, offering visitors the chance to interact with some of them.

María Medem’s imaginary universe is reflected in various non-exhibition areas of the museum that generate a sensory and experimental atmosphere where the boundaries between real, strange and ambiguous blur and materialise in different forms—mural drawings, embroideries on fabric, piped music—inviting each visitor to explore the narratives that emerge from each of the parasitised spaces.

This first graphic intervention by María Medem opens up a space for reflecting on illustration at the Museo CA2M which, in addition to the collection of illustrated stories Rosas en la lechuga (Roses in the Salad) and various other actions, will grant greater prominence to graphic language, comics, self-publishing and fanzines in the museum’s programme of activities.

María Medem (Seville, 1994) started self-publishing her comics after studying Fine Art in Seville, the city where she was born and still lives. She published her first comic book with Terry Bleu, a small Dutch publishing house. She has contributed to anthologies such as NOW (Fantagraphics, USA,), Cold Cube (Cold Cube Press, USA) and Clubhouse (Colorama, Germany) and she is a regular contributor to a variety of fanzines. In 2018 she published Cénit  with Apa Apa, for which she won the Best New Talent award at the 37th edition of Comic Barcelona and the ACDCómic critics’ award for Best New Author. In addition, she published Echos with the French firm Fidèle Editions, and she has contributed illustrations to media outlets like The New Yorker and the New York Times. She has also made animations for the musicians Rival Consoles, Hermanos Gutiérrez and, more recently, Frente Abierto. In 2023 she published Por culpa de una flor with Blackie Books and Apa Apa Cómics, which has since been translated into French and in 2025 will be translated into English, making María Medem the first Spanish author to be published by Drawn & Quarterly. She has presented work at the Grafixx  Festival (Antwerp) and Kiblind Atelier (Lyon), and was featured in the Constelación gráfica exhibition at the CCCB (Barcelona), which in 2025 will tour to Mexico City and Angoulême (France).