Hands that create bodies: the craft brought to erotic art: the new exhibition at the Barcelona Erotic Museum (MEB)

The Museum of Eroticism in Barcelona (MEB) presents "Hands that create bodies: the craft brought to erotic art", an exhibition that reveals how eroticism can arise both from the gaze and from the gesture; both from imagination and from the hand that works the material. "With this exhibition, we propose a radically new reading: eroticism is not only contemplated, it is also forged, cut, sewn, smelled... it is made and is being made," says Sigrid Cervera, Sexologist of the MEB and responsible for the theoretical and conceptual discourse of this exhibition in which the craft becomes a language.

Creation is a bodily act. All art comes from a craft, from a learning that is transmitted with wounds, repetitions, and memory. The exhibition brings together pieces by authors whose artistic practice emerges directly from manual professions: blacksmiths, carpenters, stonemasons, designers, textile craftsmen, or perfumers.

"We are very pleased to inaugurate this new exhibition idea as it represents a golden clasp to this 2025," says Sarah Rippert, Director of the MEB. "The MEB has always been a space where eroticism is thought of in an open and plural way. With this exhibition, we broaden our narrative towards material culture: towards crafts, craftsmanship, and processes that also shape eroticism," highlights Rippert.

"This exhibition claims that eroticism is also constructed through doing, through the patient gesture of transforming matter," says Sigrid Cervera, Sexologist of the MEB and responsible for its Department of Education. "At a time when the visual dominates, 'Hands that create bodies' recovers the value of manual work as a cultural language and as a way to understand the body and desire," she adds.

The exhibition is structured around a double perspective:

- The craft as an extension of the body: the hands that forge, cut, join, or mix materials speak to us of an eroticism physically constructed, without abstractions.

- The body as a symbolic territory: the artists take organs, memories, and sensitivities as their raw material to think about pleasure, grief, identity, and erotic experience.

Core piece: Mourning, by Vicente Romea Ramón

The central piece, Mourning, inaugurates a new discursive line at the MEB: the union between eroticism and metal. Vicente Romea Ramón, a welder for thirty years, transforms corten steel into a folded, intimate, vulnerable female figure. The white scar on the sex is memory, not provocation; a wound turned into form. Mourning reminds us that eroticism is also fragility, transformation, and emotional grief. "I have always worked with metal, it is a material that has been part of my life since I was very young: its hardness, its resistance, its transformation through the hammer and the anvil, everything about it challenges me. But it was through sculpture that I discovered a deeper, intimate, and symbolic channel to express myself," says the artist creator, Vicente Romea.

"It is a perfect piece to work with our visitors on how desire shapes the human being: with its joys, its losses, its readjustments, and its reconstructions," says the Sexologist of the MEB, Sigrid Cervera.

Dialogue works: craftsmen talking about desire

The exhibition brings together creators who connect their craft with eroticism from deeply personal perspectives such as, for example

- Fabrizio Facchini, firefighter and designer, carves the wood rescued from the Tyrrhenian Sea in Vagina, a work where wounded material is reborn.

- Patricia Bonfante, with her VDoor Project, converts textile into sensual and ritual architecture.

- Can Can Dresses from El Molino, icons of scenic desire in Barcelona.

- Rob MacDonald, a stone worker, proposes a Stone Penis that questions the tension between desire and vulnerability, reflecting sexuality and conflict.

- The Perfume Installation The Erotic Family, where the sense of smell narrates absent bodies and intimate encounters.

An exhibition also serving sexual education

The proposal has a fundamental educational dimension. From the museum's Education Department, the exhibition will be incorporated into guided tours, workshops, and especially the program "Eros in Family. Affective and sexual education through erotic art," aimed at accompanying conversations about sexuality in safe, respectful, and creative contexts. "The crafts present in the exhibition allow us to talk about sexuality from places that do not generate discomfort or defenses: from the doing, from the material, from how we build eroticism with our hands and our history," explains Cervera. Artworks will be used to work on consent, corporality, attachment, diversity, and affective memory in an accessible way for all visitors.

An unprecedented contribution to the discourse of the MEB

The inauguration of this exhibition and the program "Eros in Family" are two of the highlights of the MEB for this Christmas. In addition to the various tours and guided visits that can be done by reservation, such as "Secrets of seduction" or "The Art of toys and erotic play," their famous Shibari shows, Erotic World Balls, or Male Strip-tease are offered. "I always say that if you want to be original, giving any of our activities or guided tours is undoubtedly the best gift for Christmas and for the whole year," says Sarah Rippert, director of the MEB.