The Rehabilitation of La Casa Invisible
Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson
Opens September 4 th 2025
The Rehabilitation of La Casa Invisible – Chapter I /
La Rehabilitación de la Casa Invisible – Capítulo I
An Ongoing Collective Art Project by Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson with La Casa Invisible.
4 September – 18 October 2025
Gallery Gudmundsdottir
Joachimstr. 17, 10119 Berlin
Opening a new chapter of activist art, collective architecture, and civic imagination, Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson, together with La Casa Invisible in Málaga, present The Rehabilitation of La Casa Invisible – Chapter I, an expansive community art project that operates across architecture, film, activism, and social practice.
La Casa Invisible, a citizen-managed social and cultural center located in an 1850 neo-Arabic building in the heart of Málaga, is a living experiment in citizen participation and horizontal governance. Since its occupation in 2007, the center has grown into a crucial commons — nurturing cultural, artistic, ecological, feminist, queer, and political initiatives in defiance of institutional neglect. Now facing imminent eviction, the project seeks to re-anchor and support La Casa Invisible by strategically reintroducing an architectural renovation plan by architect and professor José Manuel López Osorio, through a useful art project initiated by Castro & Ólafsson with the center and curator Gemma Medina Estupiñán.
The project expands collective work for over more than two years, including performances, demonstrations, rehabilitation workshops in collaboration with the architecture universities of Málaga and Seville, campaigning, exhibitions, meetings with the mayor and the city council, the production of a film, and a growing multimedia environment traveling to different exhibitions at various stages of the process in Spain and abroad.
Castro & Ólafsson, known for their polyphonic and collaborative practice, initiated the project not as external observers but as embedded participants. Working in close partnership with local architects and self-organized groups that constitute La Casa Invisible, they activated a visionary long-standing renovation plan designed by architect José Manuel López Osorio in 2016, in collaboration with his Architecture MA students and the community of La Casa Invisible.
Conceived as a “useful art” project, The Rehabilitation of La Casa Invisible is more than a material transformation: it is also a collective gesture towards legal recognition and spatial permanence. By investing in the future of La Casa Invisible, the art project becomes yet another tool for advancing the long-contested demand that the city of Málaga officially cede the use of the building to the citizen collectives who have given it life.
Parallel to the architectural rehabilitation workshops, Castro & Ólafsson developed a multi-format film project, a collectively made docu-essay, partially musical in form, that portrays, reflects on, and amplifies the core ideas of the rehabilitation project. The video acts both as an artwork and as a political tool: chronicling the center’s history, illuminating its daily practices, and asserting its relevance locally and globally in the face of increasing privatization, the acute crisis of housing and communal space, and civic erosion. The film is being presented in various contexts — from art institutions and festivals to public squares and digital platforms — and is envisioned as a living, adaptable work that evolves with the process it portrays.
Supported by institutions such as Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid) and Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven), The Rehabilitation of La Casa Invisible – Chapter I is a profound example of how contemporary art can inhabit civic urgency. It calls attention to the critical role of collectively managed cultural spaces in our cities and asks what forms of artistic practice are possible — and necessary — within today’s shifting political landscapes.
As the threat of displacement looms, the art project stands as a model of resistance through care, creativity, inventiveness, and critical collective action.
About the Artists
Libia Castro (ES) & Ólafur Ólafsson (IS) have worked together as an artist duo since 1997. They represented the Icelandic Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennial and have exhibited widely in biennials, museums, squares, rooftops, building façades, and community centers. Their trans-disciplinary practice moves fluidly across media and geographies, combining conceptualism, political critique, and collective experimentation. Engaging collaborators from diverse backgrounds, they create works that range from public interventions to immersive installations, often blurring the boundaries between art and activism. Recent projects include In Search of Magic – A Proposal for a New Constitution for the Republic of Iceland, which earned them the Icelandic Art Prize in 2021, and The Right to Eindhoven – Circuit of Commons (2024–ongoing), initiated in their recent solo exhibition Positions #8: Art is a Verb (2024–25) at Van Abbemuseum in the Netherlands.
About La Casa Invisible
Founded in 2007 through a citizen occupation of an abandoned municipal building, La Casa Invisible is a self-managed cultural and social center based on horizontal structures, direct democracy, and collective care. It hosts a wide spectrum of activities and collectives, from experimental art to critical pedagogy, and is organized through open assemblies and working commissions. For over 18 years, it has served as a vital common in the city of Málaga, now under threat of eviction despite its indisputable public value and cultural contributions.
The project has been made possible with the generous support of the Mondriaan Fund (Netherlands), CBK- Center for the Visual Arts Rotterdam (Netherlands), Van Abbemuseum (Netherlands), ACE - Acción Cultural Española (Spain), the Icelandic Visual Arts Fund and the Artists' Salary Grant (Iceland).