Magali Reales

Contacter l'artiste

Ritual Sensuality and Poetics of Origin

Magali Reales (Cali, Colombia, 1961) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans painting, performance, installation, and multimedia art. Her career, developed between Colombia and Europe—with her base in France—has been characterized by a constant exploration of the relationship between body, space, nature, and ritual. With training in psychology, textile art, contemporary dance, art history, and fashion design, her work is as rigorous as it is sensitive, and is part of an expanded artistic practice that integrates thought, bodily memory, and sensory experience.

Over more than two decades of work, Reales has exhibited in Colombia, Belgium, Spain, Poland, France, and the Netherlands, developing an artistic corpus that interrogates the role of art as a vehicle for ancestral connection, healing, and resistance. Her projects are informed by a profound look at the symbolic and the spiritual, especially in dialogue with indigenous cultures such as the Kogui, whose worldview is evoked in series such as Song to the Tribes and Healing Rites.

The use of mixed media—such as gold dust, gouache on kraft paper, and anthropometry—reveals an interest in the physical and symbolic imprint of the body, sacred materiality, and gesture as a vehicle of transmission. Works such as Kogui Dance transform the surface into a ritual territory, where the body not only represents but also invokes.

Her work Symphony in Yellow (2023), presented at the Online Performance Art Festival, is a brief but powerful piece that intertwines birdsong with mechanical sounds, in a tension between nature and artifice. Here, the artist deploys an auditory sensibility that goes beyond the visual, proposing a sensorial ecology where silence also has agency.

Reales understands art as a form of active listening: to bodies, to the environment, to the past. Through color, light, sound, and texture, her work offers an immersive experience that seeks to reconnect the viewer with the essential, with what has been lost or silenced. Far from a purely contemplative aesthetic, her work questions the vital, the earthly, the invisible.

In times of uprooting and visual overload, Magali Reales's practice is an act of poetic resistance and re-enchantment of the world. Through subtlety, the artist constructs spaces of pause, communion, and embodied memory. Her art is not just seen: it is perceived, breathed, and felt.

M A G A L I R E A L E S

Painter, performance artist and cultural mediator, born in Cali, Colombia.

2018 “Fuga en re-sideral”, Galeria el Callejon, Bogotá, Colombia
2016 “Bogota X Capita ((Nega-Action))”, Ap-Art Gallery. Bogotá-Colombia
2006 “Soin Pour la Terre”. Espace Krajcberg. video-instalation-performance. Paris France
2005 “Ancestro, lenguaje secreto”, Intercommunal tourism official Saint Denis, Saint Denis, France.
2003 “Pinturas a retazos de letra y papel”, Gallerie Renoir, Cinema La Latina, Paris France
2001 “Percorso Nomade”, Villa Vogel, Florence, Italie.
1985 “Concience in harmony”, International School of Sophrology, Bogotá-Colombia
Solo exhibitions
2024. “Symphony of color and noise in mi”- video installation. Anima MUNDI Festival- Palazo Albrizzi, Capello, Florence, Italy
2023. “Three different actions” Online Performance Art-Festival. Flevoland Nederland
2023. “DE-Forest-acción”, Online Performance. Art-Festival. Flevoland Nederland
2022. “Places, Paths and Stories,” collective exhibition mediated by Sophie Mauch. Switzerland, Brazil, Germany and Colombia.
2021. “Transito Subatómico” -Subatomic Transit-, Embassy of Colombia in Switzerland and Periphery Arts. Bern, Switzerland
2020. “In Between Memory and Forgetting” Installation and performance, Rutger Brant Gallery. Art ID, Amsterdam, Netherland
2020. “Names of the Amazon tribes”, performance in a church, collective space for photography-. Palermo, Italia
2020. “Names of the Amazon tribes”, performance in front of the Roche pharmacy. Basel Switzerland.
2019. “Expedición Dorada”, Venice Biennale; Vision Art Festival; En Palazo Ca’ Zanardi. Venice-Italy.
2019. “Expedicion Dorada”, Installation and performance. P. E. P. A. Pequeño Evento de Performance Art, Madrid, Spain
2019. “AMA.zona- en.letra fluxus” Performance. Café Concierto, Pombal, Portugal
2017. “Socially engaged art. study [74]” International Performance Biennial, Perfornet, Bogota Colombia
2016. “Women in the arts”, Institute of Hispanic Culture of Houston. Texas, U.S.A
2016. Varius performances in the V International Biennial of Performance ((PerfoArtNet)). Bogota, Colombia
2015. “Constela-Acción” Bo-Art Gallery, painting, Bogota Colombia.
2015. II Latin American Meeting of Researchers about the body and corporeity in cultures, Performance, Bogotá-Colombia
Installation and Performance
Group Exhibitions
2015. “Scenic drawings” with my piece, Mensaje para agatha desde las estrellas, Teatro Varasanta, Bogota Colombia.
2014. “Espacialidades Exteriores”, Planetario Distrital, Bogota Colombia..
2013. “El viaje de Agatha” in the exhibition Máquinas-Ficcionantes, laboratory for the construction of an organic ship.
Plataforma, Bogota Colombia.
2010. “Danza con el viento” en La Maloka, ancestral art, ritual and collective performance, Bogota, Colombia
2010. “Zichtbare Gedachten”, Video and installation at the Ecco Cultural Center of Werft Geel, Belgium
2007. Gallery ZPAP, "Soin pour la terre" video installation Opole-Poland.
2007. Gallery Wojewódzkiej Biblioteki Publicznej. Linear Katharsis. Lucilla Kossowska y Gutevolk. "Soin pour la terre". Opole-Poland
2006. Galerie Art et Miss. Collective Paris, France.
2006. “Soin pour la terre”, J.CREA.15. Salon de Jeunes créateurs. Mairie du 15eme. Paris, France
2005. “Ancestro, lenguaje secreto” Intercommunal Tourism Official Saint Denis, Individual Exibition. Saint Denis, Paris.
2005. “Maisonsansdroit” (sinderechoacasa) installation, Musee du Monparnasse, Paris,France
2005. “Retazos de cielo”, Consulate of Colombia, Paris,France
2005. “Retazos de cielo”, Artitude Gallery, Paris,France
2006. Soin pour la Terre. video instalation. Bienal J.CREA.15 Salon Jeunes créateurs, Marie du 15eme arrondissement, Paris, France
2005. “Kogi Dance,” 1er Salon du NU, performance at Espace Champerret, Paris, France
2004. “Object chanson” Bienal J.CREA.15 Salon Jeunes créateurs, Marie du 15eme arrondissement, Paris, France
2004. “Dance Kogi”, Performance and installation at the Artitude Gallery, Paris, France
2003: “Kogi Dance”. Casa de Mexico. Performance. Cité Universitaire Sorbonne. Paris France
2003: “Accion por una liberacion”. Maison des Femmes. Performance. Paris-France.
1999.”Cartas al hombre Oro”. 9 prints. Biblioteca Nacional de Madrid. XX century contemporary engraved collection, Sala Goya, Itinerary
exhibition across Spain.
1998. ”Cartas al hombre Oro”. 9 prints. Maison de la Culture San Lorenzo del Escorial. Madrid / Spain.
1998. First Latin American Art Fair, Casa de Campo Madrid Spain.
1998. “Dance in the silence”. action Museum of art of the Reina Sofia in the Gardens of the Prado Museum, El Retiro Park and Velásquez
Palace. Madrid Spain. Activities with the "Untitled" group in Madrid, Spain.
1994. “El Arte Antes de Nuestro Arte”. Art before our art, Circulo de Bellas Artes de Madrid. Goya Room Round Video Table Installation,
video-conference, Madrid, Spain.
1994. 6x3 operacione para video. -The fish tank 6X3 actions for video- Circulo de Bellas Artes . Performance, Madrid, Spain
1994. Ganando espacio, Barrio del Pilar, Madrid, Spain
1994. Por los ninos de Yugoslavia. Circulo de Bellas Artes de Madrid. Sala Goya, Madrid, Spain
1993. Tierra, Aire y Fuego -Land, water, air and fire-. Colegio Mayor Miguel Antonio Caro, with the group «Sin titulo». Madrid, Spain

Studies
1985. Psychology , Universidad de la Sabana, Bogotá, Colombia.
1985. Contemporary Dance. Thriknia Kabhelioz, Bogota Colombia
1988. Escuela de Madrid de Diseno de Modas EDYM - School of Design and Fashion-. Fashion designer, Madrid, Spain
1989. History of Art, Universidad Nacional, Bogotá, Colombia
Other Professional Experience
2018_ Curator for the exhibition “Illustrare”, Central Gallery, Bogota, Colombia
2014_ Director of the Fundación Independencia Alestadodelespíritu, Bogotá, Colombia
2013_ Director of the "Sindrome cultural", publication of the newspaper Petróleo energetico, Bogotá, Colombia
2008_ Cultural management for the exhibition "Catarsis linear", Instituto de Bellas Artes y Ciencias de Bolivar in collaboration with the Embassy of
Poland, Cartagena, Colombia
2007_ Workshops with the “Colegio del cuerpo”, “Ma Project - my body, my house”with the Embassy of Japan. Cartagena, Colombia.
2008_ Professor of Art History with the Colegio del cuerpo, Cartagena de Indias-Colombia.
2005_ "To the memory of migrant women" Maison des Femmes de Paris. Rajfire, Paris France
2002_ Painting teacher. Training Center for adults. Castell Bell and Villar. Barcelona, Spain
2001_ Arts Workshop “Under the thread of Ariadn” Arles Center, Florence, Italy
2001_ Textiles Workshops “Make a tapestry” Arles Center. "Fare un arazzo", Florence, Italy
2001_ Textiles Workshops Program. Popular Educational Center -La Baraka- Project "Porto Franco", Florence, Italy
1991_ Estimation and research on a piece of painting by the master Gregorio Vasquez de Arce y Ceballos, advised by the curator Eduardo Serrano
piece deposited in the collection of the facilities of the Museum of Art of Bogotá, Colombia
1991_ Works of art estimation, and research for the National Bank of Colombia, Avaluos Salazar Giraldo, Bogotá, Colombia
1989_ Professor of Textile fundamentals. Arturo Tejada Cano School. Bogotá, Colombia.

Disciplines	Multimédia, réalité virtuelle, Performance, Art Plastique, Design textile, Installation, Peinture
Sujet	Création multimédia
Techniques	Huile, Acrylique, Encre
Support et matériaux	Plâtre, Métal, Bois, Toile, Papier
Tendances	Body Art, Land Art, Art conceptuel, Abstraction