Requiem (Plegaria), 2019-2021

24k gold leaf, oil, nails and fishhooks on linen panel on plywood

Courtesy the artist & Ben Brown Fine Arts

For Cubans the sea represents a double isolation, geographic as well as political. To this day people are not free to leave the island country, which has been embroiled in an ideological struggle with its powerful neighbour, the U.S., for more than 60 years. Thousands of Cubans have died trying to cross in precarious, overcrowded vessels the relatively short stretch of sea that separates the island from the coast of Florida. Hence, a seascape can be also understood as the barrier that keeps people imprisoned against their will, choppy waters becoming the ominous image of a graveyard. 

“In 2019, during my first solo exhibition in Italy, I was deeply impacted by two things: The first was the art of museums and churches with their stunning frescoes and altars; the second was the migratory drama and the human conflict that surrounded the Mediterranean sea at that time. The same day I returned from visiting the Uffizzi gallery I was watching the news on TV about the suffering of migrants and the ecological conflict Europe is facing. I could not help but perceive many analogies with what we have experienced in the Caribbean, expanding my analysis towards a panorama of more universal and global problems. That is how I came up with the idea of developing these pieces, recreating the technique and forms of medieval polyptychs, creating works that instead of depicting deities and saints would represent only the horizon and the sea, taking the series of paintings made with fishhooks that I have been doing in the last years into a different path.”