Guide Fossil: exhibition at the Gernika Peace Museum

We have been invited to participate in a group exhibition at the Gernika Peace Museum, marking the 90th anniversary of the military coup in Spain in 1936. The title of the exhibition is “Fosil Guía: Arqueología de la Guerra Civil”, and it is curated by archaeologist Josu Santamarina Otaola and visual anthropologist Ander Gondra Aguirre. It runs from September 2026 through February 2027.

Our contribution consists of “Alemanen kanposantue” (2019) – a three-dimensional reconstruction of a forgotten Nazi monument from the Spanish Civil War, whose original text has become illegible after years of neglect, vandalism, and many layers of political graffiti.

The temporary exhibition at the Peace Museum uses archaeology and art as a means of connecting past and present. It focuses on the material traces left by the Spanish Civil War of 1936 in the Basque Country. Objects such as bullet casings, shrapnel, clandestine burial pits, monuments, craters and graffiti are presented as archaeological evidence of war, resistance and the early Franco regime.

The exhibition is built around the concept of the “guide fossil”: an object so characteristic of a historical period that it defines it, comparable to trinitite as the ultimate artefact of the nuclear age. Drawing on archaeological finds from Bizkaia and Araba, in combination with contemporary artworks by, among others, Taxio Ardanaz, Verónica Domingo and Mateo Zikuta & El Garto, the exhibition invites reflection on which material traces best define the Civil War as a historical and geological layer.

“Alemanen kanposantue” was created at the time in close collaboration with the archaeologist Josu Santamarina, and is a key work in the exhibition because of the way artistic and archaeological practices overlap and mutually influence each other within it.

Practical information:
Dates: 17-09-2026 - 15-02-2027
Opening 18-09-2026 at 18:00

Museo de la Paz de Gernika
Foru plaza, 1
Gernika-Lumo (Bizkaia)

Supported by CBK Rotterdam (Centre for Visual Arts Rotterdam).