Asunción Molinos Gordo
The Peasant, the Scholar and the Engineer

April 16 – September 21, 2025

Throughout her practice, Asunción Molinos Gordo centres the perspectives and knowledge of farming communities. She celebrates their expertise as intellectuals and engineers who design complex systems for tending to the land and growing crops, reflecting their ability to organise the world. ‘The Peasant, the Scholar and the Engineer’ spans fifteen years of Molinos Gordo’s work, tracing her journey from foundational artwork on food systems and agriculture in Egypt and the Arab world to recent investigations of Arab and Muslim heritage in her native Spain.

‘The Peasant, the Scholar and the Engineer’ is Asunción Molinos Gordo’s first retrospective exhibition in West Asia. It marks her second major collaboration with Art Jameel, following the 2019 Artist’s Garden, In Transit (Botany of a Journey).

Asunción Molinos Gordo (b. 1979, Spain) is a research-based artist strongly influenced by anthropology, sociology and cultural studies. Her practice questions the definition of innovation in contemporary mainstream discourses, working to generate a less urban-centric way of understanding progress. Her work centres on contemporary peasantry. She understands small or medium farmers not merely as food producers but as cultural agents, responsible for perpetuating traditional knowledge and for generating new expertise. She employs installation, photography, video, sound and other media to examine the rural realm, driven by a strong desire to understand the value and complexity of its cultural production, as well as the burdens that keep it invisible and marginalised. She has produced work reflecting on land use, nomad architecture, farmer strikes, territorial bureaucracy, transformation of rural labour, biotechnology and global food trade.

Molinos Gordo won the Sharjah Biennial Prize 2015 with her project WAM (World Agriculture Museum) and represented Spain at the 13th Havana Biennial in 2019. She obtained her B.F.A. from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, where she also pursued her Master in Contemporary Art Theory and Practice. She is currently studying Anthropology and Ethnography at UNED (Spain). Asunción Molinos Gordo is represented by Travesía Cuatro gallery.

Image: Asunción Molinos Gordo, WAM (World Agriculture Museum), 2010, site-specific installation. Image courtesy of the artist and Travesía Cuatro.