Carlos Garaicoa

Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa (b. 1967) is a self-taught installation artist and photographer who began his career in the 1990s in his hometown of Havana. He is best known for his use of images of and references to architecture, both real and imaginary. For Garaicoa, architecture is symbolic of the tenuous state of his homeland, as many of Havana's public buildings have literally crumbled to the ground over the forty years since Castro came to power. Havana's ruins unleash Garaicoa's desire for a utopian architecture that alludes playfully to modernist architecture: temples, skyscrapers, freestanding blocks, and simple one-story buildings.

This exhibition will feature a recent body of work titled Self-Flagellation, Survival, Insubordination (2003). The installation consists of roughly thirty small, painstakingly assembled, architectural models that are tethered to the gallery wall by delicate threads attached to stickpins, which lay out each model's floor plan. The inherent fragility of these works is reflective of the unfortunately tenuous nature not only of specific buildings, but of entire nations and their citizens.

Garaicoa's work has been exhibited in several major international exhibitions, including Documenta 11 (2002), Art Statements at Art Basel Miami Beach (2003), and the 2004 Sao Paolo Bienial in Brazil.

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Carlos Garaicoa
Kurator: Dean Sobel
Organisation: Aspen Art Museum