Carlos Garaicoa
Welcome, 2011. Installation. 700 x 300 cm
Since the 1990s, Carlos Garaicoa begins his artistic career in his hometown of La Habana. His critic discourse on contemporary society translates into works of diverse formats, such as photography, installation, interventions, video and drawings.
He works with the visions of urban spaces, which reflect the context through the projection of fictions, as for example certain works in which he reconstructs using textile techniques buildings that have never been built in La Habana.
His projects feed from fragmented memory, referencing the failure of Cuban social and architectural programs and creating allegories to monuments and ruins from the past.
His work references political standpoints such as totalitarianism, dictatorship and socialism. He uses formats -such as models, architectural drafts and photography- to produce projects that denounce past events in countries that suffered from totalitarianism, without losing a certain degree of irony. The subject of border is present in several moments in the works of the artist, being that he produced a series of interventions and videos linked to political frontiers and dividing walls.
For Of Bridges & Borders 2011, Garaicoa started a new work produced together with Fundación Proa, whose starting point is Cuban immigration to the U.S. Garaicoa says about Welcome (2011): “It is an installation linked to my previous work Der Gast/El Invitado (The Guest, 2006), where I dealt with existing bureaucratic systems to travel from one place to another in third world countries. I also talked about the possibility/ impossibility of movement and psychological adversity that an individual who has to endeavor all that paperwork has to go through to move, visit or migrate”.
In the particular case of Welcome, the artist reunited for years invitations to participate in raffles for Green Card to live in the United States. During the period when he stocked this letters, he was unable to travel to the U.S. for political reasons. The work plays with this dichotomy between the constant temptation of the invitation and the impossibility to actually access the country. -
Carlos Gariacoa (1967, La Habana, Cuba). Lives and works between La Habana and Madrid.
He works with galleries such as Continua, in San Gimignano, Beijing and Le Moulin; Elba Benítez, in Madrid; Luisa Strina, in San Pablo; and Habana, in La Habana. He had several exhibitions at MoMA (New York), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Caracas, the Museum of Modern Art in Medellin, the Museum of Modern Art in Dublín, Burgos’ Museum y the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.
He took part in important international artistic events such as the Biennales in São Paulo (2004/ 2010), Venice (2005/ 2009), Liverpool (2006), Dokumenta 11 in Kassel (2002), Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates (2005), Moscow (2005) and Yokohama’s triennial (2001).
He received the International award for Contemporary Art of Monte Carlo and the Katerine S. Marmor Award in 2005, amongst others.
His work is included in important museum collection such as the Museum of Fine Arts from Houston, MoMA, Tate Modern, MOCA, Guggenheim in New York, MACBA in Barcelona, Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris.
Links:
http://www.carlosgaraicoa.com/
http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/majorprojects/garaicoa/work_1.htm
http://www.elcultural.es/articulo_imp.aspx?id=20470
http://www.icaphila.org/news/pdf/Garaicoa_pr.pdf
http://bombsite.com/issues/82/articles/2523
http://www.e-flux.com/shows/view/8383