Suave Motherland

"the Cuban nation described by ideologies and myths, is a castle, an altar, a stone of sacrifices. Such a country only can be looked at by an intense contemplation, through a seeing-knowing whose transparency is symbolized by the metaphor of the solar light." (...) "would the feeling of freedom, in our culture, be that moon of the moral world?"
Rafael Rojas, Relecturas Nacionales

These works cite fragments of a poetic discourse which casts a cheerful and innocent glance on our nation while privileging the more flexible and tolerant side of cubanes, the quotidian and less the heroic features of its insular being. Thus I choose to represent intimate elements: the map of the Havana district where I used to live, blurred black and white copies of family photos, diverse drawings, self-portrays, etc. and finally, operating in an almost magic or fetishist level, some grams of earth brought to me by a friend from some Havana garden, during a trip to the Island.

This series also embodies a gesture of synthesis that revisits strategies and methods previously recurred in my work -like Aporias of the Cuban Soul- to contrast the iconography of the graphical propaganda with this poetic imaginary that dreams another Cuba, in a peculiar utopian exercise that no longer needs even a place, as it is being dreamt by an ubicuos, diasporic mind and body. Finally, more in a literal sense, I rescued fragments of paintings I brought along for my first Canadian exhibition; canvases covered with Cuban objects of 1997, now re-glued on other canvas in a bricklayer operation though seeming a bit démodé amidst a scene dominated by multimedia and digital signs, for me it has the spiritual token of a totem ... or a taboo.

Rafael López Ramos