My whole house is an altar. Gema Polanco (PHotoESPAÑA 2026)

As part of the photography festival PHotoESPAÑA 2026, running from 13 June to 25 October at the National Museum of Decorative Arts, the artist Gema Polanco transforms the exhibition space into an intimate setting where the domestic and the sacred intertwine through a textile installation. Her project My whole house is an altar expands the medium of photography beyond the still image, extending it into the realms of performance, the physical and the sensory. Conceived as a site-specific installation, the exhibition occupies the second floor of the museum and establishes a direct dialogue with its architecture and collections. It begins with a large tapestry hanging on the staircase, which serves as a gateway to the artist’s world. From there, flags, collages, costumes and amulets come together to form a landscape in which everyday objects take on new symbolic dimensions. Polanco’s practice draws on artisanal processes, a self-taught approach and the languages of popular culture. Her relationship with textiles and craft takes an organic and intuitive approach, in which learning, adapting or inventing methods forms part of the creative process. In this interplay between her works and the museum’s collection, the museum itself is transformed; the artist becomes part of its spaces, and what once seemed fixed takes on a new guise. And so, the house opens up to the invisible: a space where the everyday can become ritual and where every object holds the potential to be a refuge, an offering or a promise. Visitors are invited to dwell on that threshold. Image credits: Gema Polanco, My Private Pool of Emotions 2024. © Nacho López Gema Polanco, View of the exhibition “The alter ego took my hand and brought” at Jorge López Galería, 2024. © Nacho López