Interview with Eva Morales
Written and interviewed by
Francisca Casas-Cordero, ISGlobal
August 5, 2025
Pedagogías Invisibles has been opening critical spaces between art, education, and cultural mediation for over a decade. In this conversation with Eva Morales, one of its co-founders, we learn more about the work of this entity and the challenges of truly transformative pedagogy.
Let’s start with the basics. What is Pedagogías Invisibles?
Pedagogías Invisibles is a collective that works at the intersection of art and education. Our approach is to understand art—and contemporary art in particular—as an educational and pedagogical strategy in itself. That is, we’re not so much interested in disciplinary arts education, but rather in how art can be a strategy to develop any kind of content and to learn anything.
In the end, what art is really talking about is life. It allows us to see beyond the obvious, to break with commonplace views. It helps us develop attitudes such as creativity, divergent thinking, and a critical outlook that we believe are fundamental to navigating today’s world.
On your website, you talk about “questioning spaces where certainties have remained.” What do you mean by that?
This relates to the very concept of “invisible pedagogies” that gives our collective its name. It refers to everything you learn without realizing it, which nonetheless affects you. It’s similar to the idea of the hidden curriculum, but it expands on it, since the hidden curriculum is usually tied to formal education. Invisible pedagogies, in contrast, can happen anytime, anywhere.
For example, when you watch a movie or a TV commercial, you are learning. You’re learning what a supposedly normative body is, what beauty standards you’re expected to meet, how to behave, how to relate to others, what it means to be a woman or a man, etc. You learn a whole set of things without even noticing, and you take them for granted. What we do is help people become aware of that.
Small Cities, by Annie Pui Ling Lok, for Levadura – Creators in Schools Residency Programme. Photos by Sara Navarro.
Through the PULSE-ART project, we aim to promote critical thinking, especially in relation to cultural diversity. What do you see as key strategies to develop critical thinking through art?
To develop strong critical thinking, you first have to work through divergent thinking—the ability to move beyond linear logic. To understand that 1+1 equals 2, but that there might also be other possibilities. Divergent thinking is essential to activate the kinds of connections that allow you to approach a situation from multiple angles. For that, creativity is key, and so is experimentation. It’s about making room for error. We’ve been talking about the importance of error for over a century, yet we still don’t manage it well: when we make mistakes, we often feel guilt or shame. The key is being able to ask ourselves, “What am I learning from this, even if it didn’t go as planned?” It’s about changing perspective.
Another thing we find fundamental is collective work. Moving away from individualism and focusing instead on connections—because it’s in working with others that your thinking grows, gets challenged, and becomes enriched. Critical thinking needs to be nourished by respect for, and knowledge of, diversity. And that can only happen by engaging with those who are different from you. Working on the idea of the “other” also means examining our fears of difference, learning to listen without feeling invalidated because someone lives or thinks differently than you. That’s why we see public education as a privileged space: it’s where multiple diverse realities coexist, where that mix happens—which, at the end of the day, is life itself.
How would you explain to more traditional educators or practitioners the role of art beyond specific disciplines?
Take video games or net art, for example. The point isn’t just to learn how to make a video game, but to reflect on what that learning reveals about life. From digitalization itself to how the game can help generate memory, enhance spatial thinking, or foster emotional, social, and cognitive development.
Highly disciplinary teaching is often hierarchical, rigid, and even toxic. Think of that stereotypical strict piano teacher who humiliates a student… that’s not acceptable. Not all teaching is valid. What matters isn’t just learning to play the violin, but everything you learn in the process: logical development, musical memory, cultural understanding—not just of classical music, but music from other cultures and backgrounds. It’s the same with dance: what matters is connecting with your body, your movement, yourself, and others around you. That’s also where diversity comes in—how dance builds a sense of belonging to a culture and how getting to know other cultures helps us feel connected to one another.
The same goes for graphic expression: picking up something and scribbling is a way of thinking, of connecting your brain to your hand, your vision, and your thoughts. Virtuosity isn’t necessary. What we should focus on are these human qualities, this integral development and education. It’s about going back to that origin, not to the excellence or virtuosity that has long been revered, but to learning to admire ourselves through our clumsiness.
PLANEA has been doing important work with public schools to integrate art through critical and collaborative approaches. How do teachers and students experience these more open and non-disciplinary pedagogical processes? Do you encounter resistance?
Before answering, I want to introduce what PLANEA is. It’s a network of schools, cultural agents, and institutions committed to using artistic practices transversally in public education. It operates across various regions through different mediation nodes: in Andalusia, our colleagues at ZEMOS98; in the Balearic Islands, Es Baluard; in Galicia, the cooperative Rexenerando; in Valencia, through the Permea Master’s and the Consorci de Museus; and in Madrid, that’s us at Pedagogías Invisibles. The network started in the 2019/2020 school year thanks to support from the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation.
Back to your question: I couldn’t give a definitive answer because the teaching profession is as diverse and multifaceted as life itself. In Madrid alone, we’ve reached almost 80 schools through PLANEA. Many of these schools already come with a prior commitment to working in these ways, but there are still many others we haven’t reached.
Even among participating schools, there are always some forms of resistance. And I think that’s normal, very human. One of the things art contributes is this training of openness—to the unexpected, to the strange. So that it doesn’t cause automatic rejection, but instead opens you to action, to listening.
We see this clearly in the programs we run. I remember a creator who spent three years at one school, and she had a great reflection, mostly about the students: she said that in the beginning, they were like, “What is this?”—confused and hesitant. But by the final year, they were completely open. And that same process happens with teachers: as they begin to understand, to become more flexible, and to build those connections, openness grows.
Regional Meeting – Planea Madrid Node. Photo by Iván Castellanos.
And finally, thinking about the sustainability of these processes: what challenges do you see in institutionalizing art as a transformative pedagogical tool?
There are some very clear tensions here. One of the most tangible challenges is simply timing: the timelines of education and those of the cultural sector don’t align. Schools run from September to June, while cultural institutions operate on the calendar year, from January to December. Just syncing those two rhythms is already a big challenge.
Second, cultural institutions need well-supported, well-funded mediation departments that can build bridges to the education sector. In PLANEA, we manage to do what we do because there are mediation teams developing and coordinating everything.
Then there’s the very concept of “institution.” There are public institutions and private ones. In the case of PLANEA, it exists thanks to a private institution—a foundation—that provides funding. Institutionalization allows for specific budgets that make these kinds of projects possible.
But that doesn’t mean everything has to go through institutions. We know that projects also happen outside of them. Culture isn’t something you can completely contain or capture. Institutions may try to constrain it, but there will always be offshoots, things happening on the margins.
The key tension, then, is this: if you want to build programs that are stable, sustainable, and scalable, there need to be institutions—whether public or private—to host and support them. Something has to hold and sustain these processes. But that doesn’t mean what happens outside institutions isn’t valuable. It is, and it will continue to happen. We just need to remember: institutions are structures, not limits.
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Eva Morales is a cultural mediator, researcher, and arts manager. She holds a PhD in Fine Arts in Art Education from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She is a member of the Pedagogías Invisibles collective and coordinates the Madrid node of the PLANEA network. Her work focuses on critical mediation, expanded education, and collaborative practices in museums and cultural centers. She has collaborated with institutions like Matadero Madrid and Museo Reina Sofía and teaches in postgraduate programs on art, pedagogy, and social transformation.
Images source: Courtesy of Pedagogías Invisibles
