CUBA PRESENTS "FREE MEN" AT THE VENICE BIENNALE

Hombres Libres (Free Men) is Roberto Diago's proposal for the Pavilion of the Republic of Cuba at the 61st International Art Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia. It is curated by Nelson Ramirez de Arellano Conde and commissioned by Daneisy García Roque. The project, on view from May 9 through November 22, is a perpetual reminder that freedom is not given — it is conquered; not a passive state, but a continuous practice, a constant tension that demands keeping memory alive and dignity intact.

The Hombres Libres installation consists of a group of sculptures — heads of varying dimensions — that advance toward the viewer, receiving and confronting them. They bear scars rising in relief across oxidized metals, wood, plastics, and reclaimed materials: a tactile memory that refuses to be crushed by oblivion. In this poetics, freedom does not mean concealing a history of pain beneath the veneer of assimilation, but displaying it like a medal.

This reclamation begins on the very surface of the work itself, confronting us with Black skin not as a smooth and docile surface, but as a geographical map of trauma and resistance. The scar thus becomes an assertion of identity: irrefutable proof of having survived punishment, and that the flesh — though marked — remains sovereign.

From this perspective, the concept of the "free man" transcends the legal definition of someone without bonds. For Diago, a free person is one who has the courage to acknowledge their marks, to dignify their precariousness, and to hold their gaze steady before a history that tried to erase them. He does not represent victims — he builds a genealogy of survivors who have crowned themselves.