GUTIÉRREZ CAMEJO AND SOTOMAYOR ON THE DECONSTRUCTION OF THE IMPOSED NARRATIVE
Pan American Art Projects presents Idos de revoluciones as part of the opening of Madrid’s gallery season, a two-person exhibition curated by Nayr López that brings into dialogue the visions and works of Lorena Gutiérrez Camejo (Havana, Cuba, 1987) and Maikel Sotomayor (Havana, Cuba, 1989). Both members of the Cuban diaspora in Madrid, the artists engage in questioning official discourses through the restoration of the primordial, the revaluation of perceptions shaped from a distance, and social critique.
Although working in very different languages, Gutiérrez Camejo and Sotomayor converge on the need to build a path that allows viewers to unearth possible readings and the impact of Cuba’s history, and to decipher the narratives that have shaped its image and myth. In this process, the vision of the diaspora becomes instrumental in embracing these new realities.
The dialogue proposed in this exhibition of a distinctly temporal nature fosters the encounter and synergy between installations and painting as valid practices in the search for keys to confronting those visions and dismantling power discourses. Lorena Gutiérrez Camejo’s proposal continues her work where cartography, concept, and appropriation generate corrections to those official accounts. By creating maps of the island with various elements of strong symbolic weight, the artist aims to amplify that social vision.
Sotomayor, on the other hand, uses painting to highlight and rescue the memory of myth, creating narratives through the conjunction of collective and personal imagery, forming a sequence where what is dreamed and desired intertwines with clichés and history. The reclaiming of roots and the search for identity also significantly confront the officialism that constrains cultural and identity narratives.
The exhibition unfolds in two interrelated moments. During the first week, the island and its landscape’s structure the dialogue between the two artists’ works, while in the second week the focus shifts to economic relations and the spaces they generate.
Idos de revoluciones can be seen until September 28 at the temporary Madrid venue of Pan American Art Projects, San Lorenzo 3, Madrid (Spain).
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