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Lot Essay
Following his debut at the Fifth Havana Biennial (1994), Kcho emerged as an emblematic artist of Cuba’s so-called “Special Period” of the early to mid-1990s, a time of economic crisis that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union. “In everything that comes from Cuba there is a brush stroke of politics,” he allows. “It’s natural for someone who never leaves Cuba to stand on the sea wall and ask what is on the other side” (quoted in S. Davis, “Up and Coming,” New York Times, 17 March 1996). Kcho has long since exhibited his work around the world and back again, recently opening a retrospective at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Havana (2020) and representing Cuba at this year’s Venice Biennale.
“I live on an island,” he acknowledges. “My limit is liquid. To cross, I’m obliged to use something that floats.” The son of a carpenter, Kcho has created myriad floating objects—rowboats, rafts, kayaks, inner tubes—whose raw precarity evokes the desperation of the thousands of balseros who left Cuba for Florida in the 1990s. “A boat is an ancient human invention,” he explains. “I don’t think there is another mode of human transport that says more about people.” The three whitewashed vessels that form Personal Light come together in the shape of a monumental compass rose, meditating on the vagaries of wind and water. “People die trying to immigrate to all parts of the world,” Kcho reflects. “My art talks about problems that affect us all” (ibid.).
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park
“I live on an island,” he acknowledges. “My limit is liquid. To cross, I’m obliged to use something that floats.” The son of a carpenter, Kcho has created myriad floating objects—rowboats, rafts, kayaks, inner tubes—whose raw precarity evokes the desperation of the thousands of balseros who left Cuba for Florida in the 1990s. “A boat is an ancient human invention,” he explains. “I don’t think there is another mode of human transport that says more about people.” The three whitewashed vessels that form Personal Light come together in the shape of a monumental compass rose, meditating on the vagaries of wind and water. “People die trying to immigrate to all parts of the world,” Kcho reflects. “My art talks about problems that affect us all” (ibid.).
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park