Brad Kahlhamer (CRF 2022) is part of a new exhibition titled Terrafilia at Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid, Spain. The temporary installation runs July 1st to September 24th, 2025 Visitors can also find Brad’s work elsewhere in the museum, part of “Transatlantic Connections,” in room 30.
Terrafilia culminates in a reflection on how stories—whether mythical, scientific, or artistic—shape our understanding of the world and our place within it. By juxtaposing diverse cosmologies and epistemologies, it invites us to reconsider the human as part of a larger planetary community, where care, reciprocity, and interconnectedness are central to survival and flourishing. The exhibition ultimately challenges visitors to embrace a more capacious and imaginative engagement with the Earth—one that acknowledges the stories of those who have been historically silenced and excluded, and that opens space for new possibilities of coexistence.
Brad’s Billy Jack, Jr. (2006) is shown alongside scenes of cultural interaction by late 18th- and 19th-century American artists in “Transatlantic Connections,” room 30 of the museum. It’s a work which fuses the exuberance of Expressionist painting with the visionary tradition of Native American art. Like other similar works, this watercolor takes its starting point from the drawings made by members of the Great Plains tribes during their forced relocation onto reservations in the late 19th- and early 20th-century. The work’s title refers to the cult film Billy Jack (Tom Laughlin, 1971) which supported the civil rights movement in the United States and drew attention to discrimination against Indigenous Americans.
Image via museothyssen.org with works by Jan Brueghel the Elder, Salvador Dalí, Elmgreen & Dragset, Martin Johnson Heade, Carsten Höller, Regina de Miguel, Diana Policarpo, Jessi Reaves, Roelandt Savery, Akeem Smith, Susanne M. Winterling and Inês Zenha. Design by TOT Studio.