Curated by Viviane Stappmanns, Nina Steinmüller, and Susanne Graner, the exhibition avoids falling into a strict chronology or closed categories. Instead, it unfolds a fluid narrative, traversed by the crossover between industrial, graphic, textile, and experimental design. From the pioneering pieces of the Bauhaus, where figures such as Marianne Brandt challenged the margins of what was permitted, to the audacious contemporaneity of Latin American designers, the tour becomes a constellation of gestures, materials, struggles, and forms.

What is remarkable is that many of these works do not need to speak explicitly of gender to be political: the mere fact of occupying a historically masculinized space is already a statement. And yet, many do so with humor, anger, or subtlety through objects, textiles, furniture, or graphics that reformulate the link between body, domesticity, public space, and production. Criticism of traditional roles is not a subtext but a constitutive part of many of the proposals.
One of the curatorial successes is the diversity of visual and cultural languages represented. The show is not limited to established European or North American figures; it includes voices from the global south, designers who operate from adverse or peripheral contexts, whose works dialogue with local, ecological, or community issues. In that sense, "¡Aquí estamos!" is a historical vindication and an intervention in the present: it makes visible what the canon still refuses to include.

The montage is accompanied by sobriety, letting the pieces breathe without imposing themselves. The visit provokes, excites, and makes us uncomfortable at times. It forces us to rethink design not as a “neutral” discipline but as a field crossed by social, economic, and symbolic tensions.

In short, "¡Aquí estamos!" is an exhibition that is discomforted with elegance, celebrates without solemnity, and reconstructs with precision a hitherto ignored genealogy. And above all, it is a call: it is not enough to look, we must rewrite the history of design, this time with all the names.

“I have a special relationship with sculpture as a medium. Earlier studies in Geology allowed me to have an intimate knowledge of primary materials, to anticipate their reactions to the various interventions in the process of carving. This approach shapes the very genesis of my subject matter: the stone talks to me through the language of textures and structures, directing me to the idea that would be finalised in the sculpture. Through this subtle dialog I seek a quiet harmony that satisfies both the eye and the soul.” (Mihai Caranica)

After emigrating to the United States in 1984, Caranica continued to create and exhibit his works, returning to Romania in 2014 to reintegrate the national artistic scene. During his long career, Caranica has developed a unique relationship with sculpture as a medium, drawing on his experiences in Geology to create works of a visually and emotionally impact.

"Mihai Caranica loves the stones. He feels the diversity of their structures and thrives in the variety of their colours and follows their behaviours under light. Formally, the shapes he generates are responding to the heavy impression of Brâncuși. But they are less important in themselves, being instead, more than anything, the testimony of a life spend in explorations of the powerful mysteries of nature. 

Guillermo Kuitca, "Tres Noches" (1986)

The curatorship, in charge of Sonia Becce and Nancy Rojas, emphasizes 1986 as a turning point in Kuitca's career. According to Becce, this period represents “a sort of beginning of Kuitca's Big Bang,” where the young artist began to develop his own highly experimental language.

The exhibition also highlights Kuitca's relationship with theater, evidenced in series such as “Nadie olvida nada” and “El mar dulce,” which share titles with plays he directed in the 1980s. This connection underscores the influence of the performing arts on his pictorial approach, fusing the domestic with the dramatic and creating atmospheres that invite introspection.

“Kuitca 86” is not a conventional retrospective; it is a focused exploration that allows the viewer to enter a key moment in Kuitca's artistic evolution, understanding the roots of his visual language and his impact on contemporary Latin American art.

Under the curatorship of Victoria Noorthoorn, director of the Modern Museum, the exhibition is presented as a space for critical speculation in which the artist reconstructs an Africa without the colonial wound, imagining scenarios in which the continent thrives without the interruptions imposed by slavery and colonization. Noorthoorn, with her curatorial approach, is always committed to contemporary art as a tool for transformation, which enhances Ekeh's work's ability to question the viewers and challenge their referential framework.

One of the exhibition's centerpieces is the Africa Jetset series, in which Ekeh uses images generated by artificial intelligence to recreate a vibrant and cosmopolitan Africa, where black leaders and artists occupy the spaces of power and historical representation. The use of artificial intelligence in her creative process allows her to model scenarios where African elites star on the covers of society magazines, evoking a parallel reality of splendor and sophistication. 

These images challenge the Eurocentric construction of history and confront us with what could have been, but also with what can still be: a prosperous, economically independent continent, without the disruption of the forced diaspora. 

Another key aspect of the exhibition is the exploration of the forest as a mythological space of resistance. In Ekeh's work, the forest is both a refuge and a territory of transformation, evoking not only traditional African narratives but also the symbolism of Western fairy tales. In times where artificial intelligence redefines the concept of creation, this exhibition opens crucial questions about the role of memory, identity, and the possibility of imagining different futures.

With "Speculations", Onome Ekeh reminds us that art is, in essence, a way of rewriting the world. Curated by Victoria Noorthoorn, the exhibition confronts us with the possibilities of a future where memory, identity, and technology converge to expand the limits of the imaginable.