artnexus #48

The Daros Latin America Collection began in the year 2000. Its primary objective is to gather the most significant works from contemporary Latin American artists and represent them in the collection. Its promoters are conscious of the cultural multiplicity that encloses such a vast territory with so many diverse identities. From this arises the concern around the development of the collection that is being formed among such a complex heterogeneity.

In the exhibition La Mirada, organized with works from the collection, there is an accurate reflection on particular points of view and on the mental and artistic attitude that goes along with taking a register of the image with a photographic camera. (Article on page 56). Our cover highlights the work of one of the artists featured in that show, Manuel Piña. Born in Havana, Cuba, in 1958, Piña studied mechanical engineering in the old USSR, but starting in the 1990s devoted himself solely to photography.

In the various series he has completed since the early 1990s (Las aguas baldías, Manipulaciones, verdades y otras ilusiones, De construcciones y utopías, Sobre monumentos), Piña has focused on dealing with Cuban issues, and although he explores these issues from the context of his own reality, they become universal —the problems Piña depicts exist in many societies, and they are meaningful for many people. Havana is a fitting background for the construction of his discourse; Piña is fascinated by the urban space, where he perceives a kind of narrative, the traces of past events, of power plays. In such context, sites like the Malecon become recurrent in the construction of his particular imagery.

Perhaps it is his background in engineering that drives Piña towards a reflection of the particular logic implied in the way we tackle each specific problem. In spite of considering that his work is somehow a documentary, Piña tries to avoid literary approaches. "I try to make a turn that goes beyond that specific reality and convert it into something more...ambiguous."

IVONNE PINI