“Them in the City”, an exhibition on the activism of local women in Seville in the 1970s

The exhibition is organized by the architect and urban planner Reyes Gallegosdirector of the documentary of the same title, and sits at the intersection between academic research, cinematic practice and neighborhood activism, offering an analytical look at how women have configured the social fabric of Seville’s urban margins.

The discursive axis of the exhibition moves from concrete architecture to social architecture. “Them in the City” focuses on the generation of women who, in the 1970s, occupied the city’s new outlying neighborhoods. These environments, born from urban planning which often ignored the human and community dimension, found their true sustenance in the invisible work of their inhabitants.

The exhibition emphasizes the value of neighborhood care and struggle as engines of survival and cohesion. Through a gender lens, we see how these women transformed hostile or unfinished spaces into vibrant communities. The exhibition argues that this collection of stories is not just an exercise in nostalgia, but an essential cultural heritage for understanding the urban transformation of the last fifty years.

The exhibition, unlike a static exhibition, presents itself as an exhibition of process materials. The visitor can follow the research route that gave birth to the homonymous feature-length documentary by Gallegos, nominated for six Carmen awards, two Asecan awards, as well as the Arrebato Feroz non-fiction award.

The room brings together photographs captured by the director herself during her immersion phase in the neighborhoods, as well as documents and archival materials which function as traces of a long-term creative process, and is supplemented by works by the photographers. Bea Hohenleiter and Ana Cayuela, which provide an aesthetic and documentary look through still photography, production and recording of the protagonists.

One of the most singular aspects of the exhibition is its condition as an open archive, as it includes publications and documents that Reyes Gallegos continued to collect organically from the different cities and neighborhoods where the documentary is shown. In this way, the exhibition expands in real time, becoming a living map of peripheral memory that transcends the physical space of the gallery.

Alongside this exhibition, the CICUS is celebrating the days entitled “Transformation and Encounter” which began on October 22 and will end with two sessions which will be held on February 18 and April 15, 2026. These sessions explore the marks that modern urban planning inscribes in the physical and mental health of women, activism and gender, the city and memory.