artnexus #44

Carlos Garaicoa (Havana, 1967) holds a place in Cuban art between the so-called generation of the '80s and the group of younger artists who came together in the '90s. His work moves in the public space, seizing it with its actions, reflecting on the difficult situation that his city is suffering and which, before the shortage of resources needed to maintain the traditional buildings, faces ruin. The ruin in deterioration, but also the inexorable disappearance of certain cultural particularities. Side by side with the ruins is utopia. The relation between utopia and architecture has an acknowledged historical background and was used to think about ideal societies. However, that reflection is not the one that Garaicoa is interested in, in his scenarios, both the splendors of the past and the indifferent passer-byes of everyday life, live together.

This version of the work is on the cover. Now Let's Play to Disappear (2002), was presented at the Italian City of San Gimignano. There, by keeping its dialogue with urban spaces as narrators of a memory that connects the past with the present, he exhibited a series of works that partially show both their will to build ideal architectonic spaces and the destructive violence they may suffer.

He created some kind of global city in which the main characters were buildings and skyscrapers from different parts of the world, made with candles. Among them were the Empire State, the Statue of Liberty, the Baptistery, and the Church of Santa Maria dei Fiori; the Vatican, the Eiffel Tower, Havana's Cathedral, Revolution Plaza, and the Capitol. On the metal table, where candles had been placed to deliver their habitual function: burn and consume, three cameras were placed to film "the city" melting, in such a way that the spectator could either watch the process directly or could sit down and watch the screen. Garaicoa states that this global city made up of candles is exposed to the game of imagination and to the suffering of such architectonic references being burned up forever.* Once again the artist confronts us with a reflection about what is urban, about memory, and about the fragility of those constructed myths that could so easily disappear. 

* Presentation by Carlos Garaicoa at the opening of his exhibition in Galleria Continua (San Gimigniano). 

IVONNE PINI