GROUP EXHIBITION AT EL APARTAMENTO: CUBAN PERSPECTIVES ON PAINTING

Painting (Archive) is the title of the group exhibition organized by El Apartamento at its Madrid gallery, bringing together seven Cuban artists from different generations. Through a representative selection of works, the exhibition reflects on painting as a site for questioning systems of representation and cultural imaginaries.

The works of Brenda Cabrera (Havana, Cuba, 1997), Leandro Feal (Havana, Cuba, 1986), Diana Fonseca (Havana, Cuba, 1978), Héctor Onel Guevara (Havana, Cuba, 1984), Juan Miguel Pozo (Banes, Cuba, 1967), and René Francisco Rodríguez (Holguín, Cuba, 1960) engage in dialogue with the trajectory of Flavio Garciandía (Caibarién, Cuba, 1954) and with the debates initiated by the Volumen I Generation. These references are essential for understanding a conception of painting linked to questions of identity and the construction of meaning within contemporary Cuban culture.

Rather than focusing on the formal qualities of individual works, the curatorial framework proposes a reading of painting as a critical tool capable of interrogating the mechanisms through which meaning is produced in contemporary culture. From this perspective, the pictorial emerges as an archive of historical, social, and symbolic tensions that cut across both artistic traditions and collective experiences.

The Cuban context, which provides the exhibition’s geographical and conceptual framework, reactivates discussions surrounding post-conceptualism, cultural appropriation, and the various forms of colonialism that have shaped the island’s experience. In this sense, the works on display appear to testify to the capacity of Cuban culture to absorb, transform, and reinterpret external influences, as well as the political circumstances that have accompanied its historical development.

The exhibited works are thus presented less as autonomous entities than as fragments of broader research processes and instruments of critical reflection. The notion of the archive shifts attention away from immediate visual experience toward the relationships between memory, knowledge, and power that painting can embody. Nevertheless, Painting (Archive) leaves room for viewers to establish their own connections and interpretations.

Painting (Archive) remains on view through August 1, 2026, at El Apartamento, Puebla 4, Madrid, Spain.