xevi bayona infuses mies van der Rohe’s pavilion with his memories
On view at the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona through August 17th, 2025, ‘La Padrina and the belongings of domesticity’ is an artistic intervention by Xevi Bayona that turns the iconic building into a vessel for personal memory. More than twenty everyday objects, once belonging to Bayona’s late aunt, known as la padrina, are installed along the ceiling of the Pavilion, forming a floating domestic scene that hovers above the polished travertine floor. A bed, a lamp, a coat rack, and a table and chair set all suspended like echoes of a vanished life, now reframed against the austere modernism of Mies and Lilly Reich’s 1929 design.
all images by Adrià Goula
La Padrina creates an aerial archive of presence and absenCe
By composing the installation as a horizontal band that runs along the ceiling, architect and artist Xevi Bayona creates a visual and symbolic axis that divides sky and ground, memory and presence, and intimacy and abstraction. The installation invites a shift in perception with its upside-down layout. Through this displacement, Bayona invites visitors to rethink how spaces become inhabited and how objects hold on to memory.
The intervention draws its title from Josefina Camó Valls, nicknamed Pepi, who was born in 1927, around the same time the original pavilion was being designed, and lived her entire life in Olot, a city in Spain. She never married, worked as an embroiderer, and left behind a house full of quietly accumulated belongings. Bayona, her nephew and godson, salvaged and relocated these personal items from her home to the Barcelona Pavilion, not on the floor, as one might expect, but up above, creating a surreal reversal, exploring the kind of domesticity the Pavilion might possess.
Part of the Fundació Mies van der Rohe’s program of contemporary interventions, La Padrina uses metaphor and contrast to explore life, death, and identity through the overlooked belongings of a single life. For Bayona, whose broader practice combines architecture with ephemeral installations and storytelling, this project is both deeply personal and architecturally precise.
‘La Padrina and the belongings of domesticity’ by Xevi Bayona is on view through August 17th, 2025
more than twenty everyday objects are installed along the ceiling of the Pavilion
a floating domestic scene hovers above the polished travertine floor
a bed, a lamp, a coat rack, and a table and chair set all suspended like echoes of a vanished life
through this displacement, Bayona invites visitors to rethink how spaces become inhabited
the intervention draws its title from Josefina Camó Valls, the artist’s aunt
a house full of quietly accumulated belongings
Bayona, her nephew and godson, salvaged and relocated these personal items
project info:
name: La Padrina and the belongings of domesticity
artist: Xevi Bayona | @bayona_studio
location: Mies van der Rohe Pavilion, Barcelona, Spain
dates: July 30th – August 17th, 2025
curator: Fundació Mies van der Rohe | @fundaciomies
photographer: Adrià Goula | @adriagoulaphoto
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