Conceding that animals dream means recognising that they have an imagination. For philosopher David M. Peña-Guzmán, dreaming is not simply reliving a scene we have experienced, but rather creating an interior world, thinking about the absent, the unreal, the possible. Dreaming, for an animal, is to defy reality: to go from present-day to fiction, facts to invention. In this way, dreams become the signs of rich, open and curious mental activity, which cannot be reduced to instinct. They testify to a sort of inner freedom, an ability to project oneself in a different way –or even to dream oneself as other.

This exhibition dives deep into these dreams –both literally and figuratively– and imagines what the dream world could be like for these non-humans. It draws on the research of David M. Peña-Guzmán and the philosophy of Donna Haraway, who invite us to think with animals rather than about them, weaving dreamlike narratives where animals become a subject of fiction in their own right. Representations of their dreams are not accessible to us and can only come through metaphors. Each work is a chance to fantasise, a fragment of a speculative dream opening our eyes to other forms of sensitivity, existence and conscience.

The animal dream is not a mystery to be solved, but a space to inhabit: these moving universes create nights where those who cannot speak perhaps dream better than us.