CURRENT EXHIBITION

Jose Toirac

These works by Jose Toirac pay tribute to the photographs of Walker Evans, who traveled to Havana in 1933 to illustrate the book by Carleton Beal, The Crime of Cuba, which documented the final days of the Gerardo Machado dictatorship.  Years later, Toirac brings these images back to life, intricately painted on old wooden planks, gilded with gold leaf from Spain, and speaks about the idea of what goes around comes around.

“There was a time when the pursuit of beauty and inner growth was the goal of poets, artists, and sensitive people in general.  Today, with social media, these aspirations have entered the public sphere, resulting in the voluntary loss of privacy and the constant risk that our feelings and thoughts may be monitored and analyzed by algorithms.  These risks are the tears that come from peeling onions.” — Jose Toirac

Go to the artist section to find out more about Jose Toirac

Leysis Quesada

“My photography tells stories of everyday life, showing both the hardships and the beauty of our society. I focus on documenting the reality of the most vulnerable people and the poorest neighborhoods. Although my work is often personal, it reflects the whole of our community. Coming from a humble background, my perspective is shaped by those experiences. My father was a field worker, and from a young age, I would accompany him to the sugar cane fields, watching the macheteros cut the cane and how it was transported to the mills. My mother, a housewife and hairdresser, always taught me the value of hard work, and from the age of nine, I would help her late into the night. Showing this Cuba, the one from the lower classes, is a way of being honest with myself. It's a reminder that behind every smile and every beautiful picture, there's always a deeper story-a constant struggle to survive. Life isn't easy, but it's real. and that's what I want to show: the raw, unfiltered truth of life, where the fight to keep going is what defines us.” — Leysis Quesada

Marcel Molina

“In recent times, the continual reduction of the Cuban sugar industry has resulted in changes in the lives of the families and towns that were created around the sugar mills, resulting in the erasing of traditions that characterized the people, leaving only traces in the memories of the inhabitants.  For me and my work, the layers of the onion are an apt metaphor for this phenomenon that is occurring in those places and the subsequent nostalgia, emptiness, anguish, and loss.” — Marcel Molina

Abel Barroso

“In my work, there is always a discovery of various layers of information that interact with each other, which must be uncovered step by step.  The audience gradually understands my themes like the layers of an onion.  Irony, humor and playfulness blend to shape the message.  Ambiguity has been a creative strategy that interests me.  There is something hidden that the viewer must come to understand.” — Abel Barroso