Daniel Steegmann Mangrané. A Leaf Shapes the Eye

A Leaf Shapes the Eye is Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s first retrospective and brings together works that span twenty-five years. A choreography between space, light, objects, and people, the exhibition is an invitation to engage physically, sensorially and intellectually, and reshape our relationship with nature.

Daniel Steegmann Mangrané. A Leaf Shapes the Eye ran at MACBA from 16 November 2023 to 20 May 2024. It was the first and largest retrospective dedicated to the artist, co-produced with the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki, and curated by Hiuwai Chu and João Laia, with Piia Oksanen. The exhibition brought together more than twenty works spanning twenty-five years – drawings, paintings, photographs, holograms, sculptures, films and installations – made from the late nineties to the present. Drawing on biology and anthropological discourses, the work dissolves the dualisms between culture and nature, subject and object, reality and dream, and engages with the agency of non-human and non-living elements. Having lived in Rio de Janeiro for two decades, the artist treats the rainforest as a living being rather than a place. The exhibition was conceived as a choreography between space, light, objects and people, and was accompanied by an artist's book co-published with Kiasma, the Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian, Lisbon, and the publisher BOM DIA BOA TARDE BOA NOITE, Berlin.