Boîte-hors-de-valise 16 (MoMA)

Davis Lisboa, Boîte-hors-de-valise 16, 2021, oil on linen, 60 × 60 × 3.5 cm (23.6 × 23.6 × 1.38 in).

The painting places Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-Valise—conceived in 1935 as a portable museum containing miniature reproductions of his works—within a coastal landscape of uncertain location, evoking both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and creating a deliberate sense of ambiguity. Above the suitcase, the acronym “MoMA” appears as a suspended element referring to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, establishing a subtle connection between the artwork and the institution. The image moves between recognition and distance, positioning the artist as both author and constructor of their own narrative.

The composition is frontal and pared down. A stretch of sand extends toward a soft horizon, where the suitcase assumes an almost architectural presence. The contrast between the openness of the landscape and the solidity of the object reinforces its symbolic weight without overstating it.

By invoking Duchamp’s portable museum, the work aligns with a lineage of artists who developed their own exhibition frameworks. Robert Filliou’s Galerie Légitime and Marcel Broodthaers’ Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles redefined the museum as an artistic form. Here, that historical narrative is revisited through painting, where the museum itself becomes an image.

Part of The Paintings Section from Davis Museum Barcelona—a miniature museum founded in 2009 within a ballot box—the work reflects on the conditions of display and circulation in contemporary art. Executed in oil on linen, it combines material clarity with a conceptual structure rooted in the history it reactivates.