For eight hundred years, the Romanesque murals of the Pyrenees remained part of the churches for which they had been created. The interior space that housed them – a realm reserved for the imagination, faith and transcendence – stood in stark contrast to the vibrant, ever-changing landscape outside.

The murals were removed and transferred to the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, ensuring that they were preserved, but this process also disrupted the balance between the symbolic and the earthly realms, between the worlds of sight and sound. Taken out of their original context, they came to be seen as isolated images. In doing so, they lost their surrounding atmosphere – an essential part of their popular identity.

The exhibition proposed by Ona Balló in the Romanesque art galleries of the MNAC, featuring sounds that fill the churches and valleys of the Pyrenees today, unfolds amongst the apses of Santa Maria d’Àneu, Sant Pere del Burgal, Sant Pere i Sant Pau d’Esterri de Cardós, Santa Maria de Ginestarre, Santa Maria de Taüll and Santa Eulàlia d’Estaon. The tour evokes the enduring nature of everything that cannot be transported and seeks to conjure up a kind of magic: the feeling that the murals are reunited with their original spirit, even if for just a little while.