What is The World? If we had to state something certain about it, we could say that it is round and that it turns. And perhaps we could add that it contains an incalculable number of things, tangible or imaginary. When spoken in English, “The World” renders the notion even more totalising, more overwhelming, more chaotic. The exhibition The World shares this with the world. Full of objects and words that are in a constant state of rotation, it is a vast collage bristling with paper skyscrapers and full of holes. The figures that inhabit the space are mannequins with a fixed, penetrating stare: the Pinocchias. What might they think of The World?
The World is Rafael Moreno’s first solo exhibition at an art centre in France. A series of new productions fills the first floor of CRAC Alsace. Sculptures, installations, collages, poems and films all reveal a patchwork appearance, as if they had been assembled hastily from found objects or were in a constant process of being made. In this explicitly DIY approach, the gesture always remains visible and connected to a set of considerations about what makes the world turn: the distinction between human and machine, the fictional nature of gender, our debt system. Envisioned specifically for the spaces of CRAC, the exhibition is the result of a broad interlocking process in which sculptures become films, poetry becomes object, and installations are images that we observe by peering through peepholes. In fact, not everything is visible in The World; the exhibition rooms are connected to other spaces within the arts centre that remain inaccessible to the public, such as the attic and the crawlspaces above the drop ceiling, from which some images are broadcasted. The exhibition takes on the form of an immense brain that recycles lived experiences and unconscious projections. Its meanderings are the streets that the Pinocchias explore endlessly.
–Elsa Vettier, February 2026
Rafael Moreno. Born in Colombia in 1993. Lives and works in Paris. Rafael Moreno is an artist-researcher and member of La Coopérative de Recherche at ENSACM in Clermont-Ferrand. She studied at the School of Fine Arts and at the EHESS in Paris. Rafael Moreno has held the solo exhibitions projections at Kunstverein in Hamburg (2026), METAPHORS at Cimaises de l’ADAGP (Paris, 2025), and MIMES at Gaudel de Stampa gallery (Paris, 2022). In 2024, she participated in group exhibitions at Mécènes du Sud in Montpellier, Établissement d’en Face in Brussels, CAPC Bordeaux and CCA Berlin. Rafael Moreno has benefited from a series of residencies: Asa Studios HFBK in Hamburg (2021), Villa Belleville (2022), Palais de Tokyo at La Friche (2023), and Salzburg Kunstverein (2024). She is also the winner of ADAGP Révélations Arts Plastiques award (2023).
