“Innovation” or “Kidnapping”: Elaine Sturtevant in Seville

Abstract

As of Summer 2025, a major exhibition of the American-born, Paris-based artist Elaine Sturtevant (1924–2014) is currently on view at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo (CAAC) in Seville, Spain. Known for her decades-long practice of repeating the works of other contemporary artists while simultaneously declaring her own work as original, Sturtevant remains a paradoxical figure in art history. Art critic Ángela Molina has argued that the exhibition risks 'kidnapping' her artistic intention by reconstructing her practice primarily through works drawn from institutional and private collections (Molina, 2025). This article examines the exhibition from Molina’s perspective as well as within the context of its heritage site, the fourteenth-century monastery that houses CAAC, in order to assess how the show engages with its title, The Echo of Innovation. It further situates Sturtevant’s sixty-year practice of repetition within the ongoing history of social violence and its mutations, tracing her shift from physical “copies” to digital interpretations and juxtapositions after the 1990s.