Held on 22, 29 Mar 2025
SOS Racismo Madrid and the Alliance for Solidarity, together with Museo Situado, present the fifth edition of the Festival of Anti-racist Culture, in conjunction with the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Through “artivism” and community creative processes, this encounter seeks to raise awareness of hate speech, call for anti-racist action and spotlight the agenda of racialised people. The festival, with the title Cooltura Futura, champions a change of paradigm in which diversity and anti-racism are its cornerstone. The encounter encompasses participatory spaces such as workshops, debates, ballroom and concerts, and features the participation of migrant, racialised and gender and sexual-affective dissidences. The activities that unfold embrace beauty, identity and community love and eschew the narrative of pain to build narratives of future, enjoyment and social transformation, demonstrating that art not only condemns inequalities but also opens pathways from pride, hope and collective strength.
The full programme is available here (in Spanish).
Collaboration
Madrid City Council and Teatro Accesible
Accessibility
Agenda
sábado 22 mar 2025 a las 12:00
Presentation of projects for the Artivism against Racism competition, by the Alliance for Solidarity
Locutorio Itinerante (Itinerant Phone Box) is an installation made by Cindy Paola Martínez-Acosta that draws inspiration from the phone boxes that were prevalent in the 1990s. Via a series of short stories simulating telephone calls from the daily lives of migrant people, the stress is placed on challenges and strong bonds of alliance.
Sonoridades y corpografías sagradas (Sacred Sounds and Corpographies) is a proposal by the Migrantes Transgresorxs collective and is based on a series of encounters and workshops conducted by young people. By way of podcasts, distant memories and histories of resistance interweave to create a combative counter-discourse to racist, xenophobic and LGBTI-phobic narratives.
¿Qué Mi(g)ras? Fanzine, by the ¿Qué Mi(g)ras? collective, which originates from the Artivism Laboratory, puts forward different artistic techniques to make the work of migrant and racialised artists visible. On this occasion they will present a fanzine.
Location: Nouvel Building, Protocol Room
Capacity: 150 people
sábado 22 mar 2025 a las 12:00
Get Ready with Peruvian transvestite Gad Yola
This session sees Gad Yola guide attendees so they can connect with the political history of drag and its relationship with the anti-racist struggle. Through examples and performances, it prompts a reflection on aesthetics and the drag/transvestite/transformist body. During her make-up, hairstyling and dressing process, she questions the Eurocentric and hegemonic canons of beauty, sharing her experience to foster an anti-racist drag culture in Spain while she offers beauty advice on their dismantling.
Accessible activity
The activity is wheelchair accessible and has accessible WCs.
The first row is reserved for people with hearing or visual disabilities.
Location: Nouvel Building, Protocol Room
Capacity: 150 people
sábado 22 mar 2025 a las 13:00
Encounter: Anybody Walking? Dissident Bodies that Inhabit the Ballroom
Perla Naomi, Cacao Díaz and Brad Scott in Conversation
Ballroom culture originated in the USA as a necessary radical act by the LGBTQIA+, Black and Latin community to respond to discrimination. Crystal LaBeija, a Black trans woman, created the first ballroom for Black and Latin people, creating a safe space for the community, in contrast to today, where ballroom culture opens its doors to all bodies, but without forgetting their origins. In this conversation, representatives from the ballroom community in Spain and part of the Kiki House of Laveaux speak about dissident bodies that inhabit it and their roles — those that perform, those that gaze and those that inhabit the ballroom beyond the dancefloor and categories.
Accessible activity
The activity is wheelchair accessible and has accessible WCs.
The first row is reserved for people with hearing or visual disabilities.
Teatro Accesible also supports the activity through the loan of hearing aid devices: personal magnetic induction loop systems and sound amplification with earphones.
Location: Nouvel Building, Protocol Room
Capacity: 150 people
sábado 22 mar 2025 a las 14:00
Community Lunch with Aires de Alondra
A collaborative, community-centred culinary experience conducted by Aires de Alondra. The initiative puts forward gastronomy and culture as a tool for dialogue and care.
Location: Nouvel Building, Protocol Room
Capacity: 150 people
sábado 22 mar 2025 a las 16:00
Queens at the Museum Kiki Ball
A ball is an event created within ballroom culture, with different categories of competition encompassing fields such as dance (voguing, dance-offs), fashion and the fashion show (runway, fashion killah, labels...), face and body (face, body realness) and others such as Black Hair Magic and Commentator vs Commentator. The aim is to create a space where anybody can express themselves on stage.
It sees in the spring as the Queens come together in the Museo Reina Sofía to celebrate another night of bodies that inhabit the ballroom. The space, replete with artworks, also demonstrates how you can break away from avant-gardes and stereotypes and how you can be the masterpiece that enraptures beholders.
Categories: Black Hair Magic, Fashion Killah, Washed Face, Trans Men Realness/FemmeQueen Realness with Posing, Commentator vs Commentator, OTA (Open to All) Runway, Walk for Your Sistah!, OTA (Open to All) Performance, Vogue for Your Sistah! and Dance-off.
Presented by: Perla Naomi, MC QueenBitch 007 and DJ Jourdan McDaniel Laveaux.
Jury: Godmother Koko Anunnaki, Cori Angels and Cacao Laveaux.
Accessible activity
The activity is wheelchair accessible and has accessible WCs on the third floor (access with lift).
Chairs are available for people who require them.
Location: Nouvel Building, Lobby
Capacity: 200 people
sábado 29 mar 2025 a las 11:30
Encounter: Creative Processes, with Noelia Cortés
Writer Noelia Cortés reflects on the power of the imagination, story and the word to transform common imaginaries, and how the Roma people have their own voice, despite the gaze of others constantly making them create from antagonism.
Accessible activity
The activity is wheelchair accessible and has accessible WCs.
The first row is reserved for people with hearing or visual disabilities.
Teatro Accesible also supports the activity through the loan of hearing aid devices: personal magnetic induction loop systems and sound amplification with earphones.
Location: Nouvel Building, Protocol Room
Capacity: 150 people
sábado 29 mar 2025 a las 12:00
Presentation of projects for the Artivism against Racism competition, by the Alliance for Solidarity
Locutorio Itinerante (Itinerant Phone Box) is an installation made by Cindy Paola Martínez-Acosta that draws inspiration from the phone boxes that were prevalent in the 1990s. Via a series of short stories simulating telephone calls from the daily lives of migrant people, the stress is placed on challenges and strong bonds of alliance.
Sonoridades y corpografías sagradas (Sacred Sounds and Corpographies) is a proposal by the Migrantes Transgresorxs collective and is based on a series of encounters and workshops conducted by young people. By way of podcasts, distant memories and histories of resistance interweave to create a combative counter-discourse to racist, xenophobic and LGBTI-phobic narratives.
¿Qué Mi(g)ras? Fanzine, by the ¿Qué Mi(g)ras? collective, which originates from the Artivism Laboratory, puts forward different artistic techniques to make the work of migrant and racialised artists visible. On this occasion they will present a fanzine.
Location: Nouvel Building, Protocol Room
Capacity: 150 people
sábado 29 mar 2025 a las 16:30
Situated Tours of the Collection
Tours of the Collection conducted by mediators from the Aissatou Ndiaye School of Situated Mediation.
The situated tours are life journeys through the Museo Reina Sofía Collection, whereby situated mediators seek to appeal to the desires and needs of migrant communities. Mediation is understood as a space of knowledge production and a vehicle for welcoming anti-racist and decolonial gazes that enrich museological narratives.
Accessible activity
Wheelchair loans and folding cane seats are available to the public
Location: Sabatini Building, rooms of the Collection. Meeting point: Sabatini Building, Main Entrance, Information Desk
Capacity: 40 people
sábado 29 mar 2025 a las 19:00
Conciertos de Pleneros del Exilio y Justicieros de la Cumbia
This session places music at the heart of a proclamation of Latin American and Caribbean culture: preserving its musical community roots and transmitting a cultural legacy of rhythm and dances.
Accessible activity
The activity is wheelchair accessible and has accessible WCs.
Seats are available for those who need them.
Accessible activity with vibrating backpacks provided by Teatro Accesible, with prior request by filling out a form from SOS Racismo Madrid.
Location: Sabatini Building, rooms of the Collection. Meeting point: Sabatini Building, Main Entrance, Information Desk
Capacity: 40 people
Participants
Aires de Alondra is a cultural association and family initiative that uses gastronomy and culture as tools for dialogue and care.
The ¿Qué mi(g)ras? collective came into being in 2024 from the Alliance for Solidarity’s Artivism Laboratory and puts forward different art techniques to grant visibility to the work of migrant and racialised artists.
Noelia Cortés is a poet and essayist. Her most recent publications include the poetry collection Del mar y la muerte (Editorial Cicely, 2024) and the essay La higuera de las gitanas (Ediciones en el mar, 2022), which analyses the deep-rooted anti-Romani sentiment in spaces such as feminism, culture, the media and language. Her latest work has been as a creative advisor on the documentary Farruquito, premiered in 2025.
Cacao Díaz is an artist of African descent whose practice spans different live-art and stage disciplines, constructing narratives and vibrations through the body that draw inspiration from experiences as a migrant and trans body. Díaz’s relationship with ballroom culture connects to affective communities of sexual dissidences and migrants, while the artist’s creative research focuses on recovering the stolen body, Afro-descendent rituals, transvestite fiction and performances of the body.
The Aissatou Ndiaye School of Situated Mediation is a project fostered by the Museo Situado assembly and the Museo Reina Sofía’s Tentacular Museum and Education Departments, in collaboration with intercultural mediator Hanan Dalouh Amghar. Its objective is for the Museo to be a more accessible space that is mindful of the demands of the community of which it is part, geographically and affectively, understanding mediation as a space of knowledge production and a vehicle for welcoming anti-racist and decolonial gazes which enrich the narratives of the Museo’s Collections. The Situated Mediators run visits to the Museo which appeal to the desires and needs of its communities and conduct them in Spanish and other languages such as Wolof, Bengali, Darija, Arabic and French.
Justicieros de la cumbia is a music band which plays a mix of cumbia, rock, reggae, funk, with a dash of madness, creating a stage-shaking musical experience.
Cindy Paola Martínez-Acosta is a political scientist and researcher.
Migrantes Transgresorxs formed in 2009 as a focal point of the LGBTI+ social movements of migrant, refugee and racialised people in Spain. The intersectional collective fights to preserve racialised lives and enhance the construction of migrant communities through encounters, workshops, actions and campaigns on human, social and cultural rights.
Perla Naomi is a trans-Indigenous-migrant artist. With a degree in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid, she works inside the framework of ballroom, opening new paths from an anti-racist, decolonial, trans and queer discourse. She has shown her work at Matadero Madrid, the Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, La Parcería, the Centro de Cultura Contemporánea Condeduque, the Festival Ciudad Bailar, the SOS Racismo’s Anti-racist Festival in Puerta del Sol in 2019, the Boiler Room Festival, CoruFest, Noche Blanca Oviedo and Don’t Hit a la Negrx, among other art events.
Pleneros del exilio are a Madrid-based Puerto Rican band who come together to preserve idiosyncrasy. The rich musical rhythms that characterise Puerto Rico are the main vehicle they use to proclaim Latin American and Caribbean culture, taking it to stage and street.
Brad Scott was born in Venezuela and currently lives in Madrid. For the past four years, Scott has been actively involved in the ballroom community, most notably as the Princess in the House of Laveaux, as well as performing, during this period, in renowned spaces like La Casa Encendida, Matadero Madrid and Noche Blanca Oviedo.
Youssef Taki is an artist and researcher whose work encompasses, from different approaches, an understanding of migratory processes and colonial and post-colonial occurrences, analysing how they impact the present and daily life. Taki is part of the Al’Akhawat collective.
Teatro accesible is a pioneering project centred on integrating accessibility measures into theatre in Spain. It was set up in 2011 with the support of the Vodafone Foundation, the Centro de Rehabilitación Laboral Nueva Vida and the technology and accessibility company Aptent. Their approach centres on adapting plays by incorporating subtitling, audio description and sign language, as well as creating inclusive experiences such as touch tours and accessible talks for people with vision impairments.
Gad Yola is a multidisciplinary artist who, through the practice of drag, creates a critical discourse around heteronormativity and European whiteness. Born in Lima and raised in Madrid, she works to disrupt and rethink institutions, exhibition rooms and Spanish pop culture. She holds a degree in Audiovisual Communication from the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid and employs music and audiovisual production to express her opposition to racism and LGBTI phobia.
Más actividades
International Museum Day 2026 with Radio 3
22 MAY 2026
On Friday, 22 May 2026 the Museo Reina Sofía celebrates International Museum Day by way of a vibrant music programme conducted by Radio 3.
From 9am to 11pm, the Museo’s Nouvel Courtyard will host the live broadcast of Radio 3’s day-long programme —also available on a video streaming on the Radio3 website and app, on RTVEPlay and on the Museo’s social media accounts. The programme comprises more than twenty live acts, including artists such as Carlangas, Shego, Soleá Morente, Kokoshca, La Tania, La Pegatina, Pipiolas, Ángel Stanich, Triángulo de Amor Bizarro and Zahara, and many others.
With this programme the Museo Reina Sofía concludes its celebration of International Museum Day, which takes place on Monday, 18 May. Both on 18 May, from 10am to 9pm, and 22 May admission to the Museo will be free of charge.
Institutional Decentralisation
Thursday, 21 May 2026 – 5:30pm
This series is organised by equipoMotor, a group of teenagers, young people and older people who have participated in the Museo Reina Sofía’s previous community education projects, and is structured around four themed blocks that pivot on the monstrous.
This fourth and final session centres on films that take the museum away from its axis and make it gaze from the edges. Pieces that work with that which is normally left out: peripheral territories, unpolished aesthetics, clumsy gestures full of intent. Instead of possessing an institutional lustre, here they are rough, precarious and strange in appearance, legitimate forms of making and showing culture. The idea is to think about what happens when central authority is displaced, when the ugly and the uncomfortable are not hidden, when they are recognised as part of the commons. Film that does not seek to be to one’s liking, but to open space and allow other ways of seeing and inhabiting the museum to enter stage.
Gerardo Mosquera: Island Thinker, Global Curator
19 MAY 2026
This encounter pays homage to Gerardo Mosquera (Havana, 1945), a pre-eminent curator, an essayist who has been part of key debates on decolonisation and the drifts of globalisation, a communicator and, primarily, an art critic who has managed to radically situate discourses and practices, while still taking on risks and perpetually upholding committed ethical positions.
Mosquera is one of the foremost curators internationally and was involved with the Havana Biennial from its foundation in 1984 to 1989, as well as curating pivotal shows in museums and art centres around the globe. Notable among his curatorial work is as adjunct curator at the New Museum in New York (1995–2009), the Liverpool Biennial (2006) and the exhibition It’s Not Just What You See. Perverting Minimalism (Museo Reina Sofía, 2000).
This round-table discussion, which features the participation of Gerardo Mosquerahimself and an ensemble of art critics, thinkers and artists, for instance Fernando Castro Flórez, Diana Cuéllar, Lillebit Fadraga and René Francisco Rodríguez, will approach the multifaceted and extremely fertile work of Mosquera as a renowned master curator.
Miguel Falomir, Director of the Museo Nacional del Prado, in Conversation with Museo Reina Sofía Director Manuel Segade
18 MAY 2026
Museo del Prado and Museo Reina Sofía directors, Miguel Falomir and Manuel Segade, respectively,engage in conversation on Monday, 18 May in the Museo Reina Sofía’s Auditorium 400, in conjunction with International Museum Day 2026, the theme of which is “Museums Uniting a Dividing World”. The discussion, moderated by journalist and poet Antonio Lucas, will see the two heads of these major cultural institutions share their reflections on the role they play in today’s society.
In addition to addressing the management of art, the conversation seeks to explore in greater depth museums’ potential as meeting points to face today’s social tensions, thereby fulfilling the international mandate of this year’s edition.
The activity will be live-streamed and is available at this link.
Collection. Contemporary Art: 1975–Present
Miércoles 13 de mayo, 2026 - 19:00 h
In this lecture, Museo Reina Sofía director Manuel Segade outlines the key readings of the new presentation of the Collection on Floor 4 of the Sabatini Building. This new arrangement is framed inside an ambitious rehang that harnesses the uses of the Museo’s architecture, in a plan that will continue in 2027 with the opening of Floor 3 in the same building, culminating with Floor 2 in 2028.
The new rehang of the Collections, unveiled on 16 February 2026, sets forth a journey through contemporary art history over the past fifty years in Spain. Rather than an unambiguous narrative, the floor recounts the same period — from the Transition to democracy in Spain to the present — in three different ways, starting back at the 1970s time and again.
The exhibition route gets under way with a prologue that travels through the affections, material culture and institutionalism of the Spanish Transition, serving as a starting point for the three routes that follow. The first, A History of Affect in Contemporary Art, advances from affective systems in artmaking linked to the second wave of feminism, arriving at grief as a tool to interpret new realities. The second route, The Powers of Fiction: Sculpture, New Materialisms, and Relational Aesthetics, is conceived as a sculpture gallery in which the artworks engage with the public, focusing on the performance side of the discipline. This route shows, among other aspects, how Spanish sculpture has gained significant international visibility since the 1980s, with women artists playing a key role in this display. The third route, A New Framework. The Institution, the Market, and the Art that Transcends Both, zooms in on the origins of the Museo and its role in the process of art’s institutionalisation in Spain. In May 1986 the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía opened, occupying the first and second floors of the former hospital: the forty years that have elapsed since then enable a re-evaluation of the effects of the Museo on Spanish art and art on the institution.
This talk strengthens the goal of socially integrating the narratives produced by the Museo at a time when the Collections are under permanent review.