10 Volumes: Fragments of a Shared Landscape
Pablo Bordon, Reinaldo Cid, Khadis De La Rosa,
Adonis Flores, Osmel Herrera López, Duniesky Martin,
Clara Massó, Marianela Orozco, Levi Orta, Linet Sánchez
22.8.–9.11.2025
What does it mean to see—not only with eyes, but through the porous lens of memory, uncertainty, and the residue of lived experience? What becomes visible when we are no longer looking for resolution, but for resilience?
10 Volumes: Fragments of a Shared Landscape assembles ten artistic voices whose work resists the urge to resolve, explain, or conclude. Instead, they dwell in ambiguity, speaking through implication, repetition, silence, and form. These are fragments that invite attention, reflection, and a willingness to dwell in the space between meanings. The exhibition proposes no singular reading, but rather a constellation of interpretations that shift with context, proximity, and time. It is a field of questions—a polyphonic terrain shaped by suggestion and simultaneity.
These ten “volumes” presented here can be thought of not as a chapter, but as a kind of vessel. Each artist contributes to a shared yet fragmented landscape, one that is at once personal and political, intimate and collective. These works are shaped by the tensions of daily life in Cuba, yet they move beyond documentary or testimonial forms. Instead, they engage a poetics of inference: they suggest, allude, conceal, and reveal, often simultaneously. Symbolism, spatial intervention, reclaimed materials, and references to the everyday act not as mere aesthetic choices, but as tools of quiet resistance and coded expression.
To underscore the layered complexity of these narratives, the exhibition unfolds in a maze-like grid. This spatial configuration—revelation and concealment, becomes a metaphor in itself: for the often obstructed paths artists must navigate within Cuban society to speak their truths, to create space for ambiguity, critique, or dissent. But the maze also implicates the audience's own act of traversal. It draws viewers into the same process of maneuvering—of negotiating meaning, retracing steps, adjusting perspective. Each turn becomes a micro-decision, each artist's presentation a shifting terrain, echoing the complexities of both artistic survival and interpretive engagement under constraint. This spatial choreography reflects a broader condition: in the language of material and movement. One in which direct speech is not always possible, and where art becomes a place to encode and protect experience.
10 Volumes is about how art carries us—across borders, through memory, into questions of belonging and dislocation. The political lives here not in slogans, but in textures: the choice to use a reclaimed material, the evocation of a threatened landscape, the refusal to render trauma legible. These gestures, quiet as they may seem, are not neutral. They assert presence, insist on complexity, and push against the erasures of dominant narratives.
Crucially, this is not a landscape of isolation. Though fragmented, the works build a dialogue—sometimes quiet, sometimes dissonant—across forms and experiences. The notion of a “shared landscape” is presented as both a hope and a provocation. Who shares it, and under what conditions? What solidarities can form between fragmented lives? How might art trace or imagine new paths across borders, both literal and symbolic?
The idea of a "shared landscape" is both aspirational and unstable. It gestures toward common ground—yet also asks: shared by whom, and at what cost? In inviting multiple interpretations, the exhibition recognizes that meaning is not fixed. It shifts with perspective, with language, with memory. The viewer’s own experiences inevitably color what is seen—and what is missed.
Ultimately, this project invites a kind of intimate politics: one grounded not in grand declarations, but in the act of careful attention. To linger with these works is to accept not knowing fully, and to find meaning in that openness. In a time when certainty is often demanded and nuance diminished, 10 Volumes proposes another rhythm—slower, softer, but no less urgent.
This is a landscape of fragments. And like all fragments, they call us to piece together—not a singular truth, but a constellation of relations.
ARTISTS AND THEIR WORKS
Osmel Herrera López’ (b. 1988) set of lanterns in the foyer staircase (Naming the City) suggest the familiar image of Havana’s nighttime skyline—the silhouette traced by the slow blinking of city lights in the warm night, like a romantic postcard. On closer inspection, however, the landscape is constructed of small bird cages. The comforting idea of a lantern, emitting light in the dark, might conceal tensions within its hopeful appearance.
In the White Town series, Herrera uses birdcages as templates for composition, and candle smoke to shade the canvas. The use of smoke draws inspiration from the candles commonly lit in Cuban homes to illuminate the dark nights due to the constant power shortages and black outs. Here, the candle becomes a symbol of faith—not only a marker of passing time, but also the possibility of transcendence – to move beyond mental, conceptual, or physical boundaries, escaping the constraints of the present.
The enclosed constructions in Linet Sánchez’ (b. 1989) series 00:00:00 #2, devoid of a recognizable façade, windows or doors, create an alienating appearance. Standing in a void—an anonymous emptiness—the forms are stripped of all human presence and interaction. The spaces may refer to the isolated and confined condition of Sánchez’s home country, both geographically and metaphorically. Highly controlled environments are not unfamiliar within the Cuban landscape: a public sphere where words and actions are carefully measured to avoid scrutiny, and where connections to the outside world are consistently limited.
Adonis Flores’ (b. 1971) two resin and fiberglass sculptures, titled Sentry, present perfectly symmetrical figures—uniformed soldiers—with a panoptic gaze. Modelled after the artist’s own profile, the ever-alert soldier’s eyes appear to observe everything, yet the viewer can never catch his gaze. The sculptures are rooted in his experience as a soldier.
Various mechanisms in today’s surveillance societies ensure that citizens remain under constant watch, aimed at identifying and neutralizing dissent. Over time, external surveillance becomes internalized—both consciously and unconsciously. The third sculpture by Flores in the exhibition— Grinder, an army boot transformed into a meat grinder—alludes to both the mechanized nature of the soldier and the brutal reality of war.
In the work Season, Khadis De la Rosa (b. 1991) hangs in the Trendelenburg position, resembling a cocoon on the verge of transformation. For two and a half months, the artist underwent intense physical preparation to remain upside down with military belts weighing her down. De la Rosa interrogates the principles of the military life in her art – a universe that has been an essential part of her identity due to her parents, who devoted many years of service to the army.
The piece Safeguard emerged from De la Rosa’s process of unstitching more than fifty military uniforms. During this task, she began to discover small objects inside the pockets. These personal items, stored by time and forgetfulness in the fabric, become and act of revelation, where the personal disrupts the institutional, and forgotten memory recovers its voice.
Clara Massó’s (b. 1997) digital video Family Portrait
reimagines the concept of home. The work traces, through
coordinates, the movements of each member of Massó’s family
and close acquaintances between 2020 and 2025. Each individual
appears as a moving point in space, forming a dynamic constellation.
This work redefines the concept of home as something mobile and
mutable. It emerges not only from Massó’s personal experience,
but also from a broader, collective reality shared by many Cubans:
the experience of migration and the inevitable fragmentation of the
family unit. Rather than simply documenting this process, the work
transforms migration into a poetic gesture—where absence becomes
a new form of presence, and disconnection gives rise to a reimagined
sense of togetherness.
The Series The Difficult Act of Confusing the Horizon (2015–2025) by Duniesky Martín (b. 1983) discusses how Hollywood has portrayed Cuba without having filmed on the island. Numerous North American productions have been shot with fake sets due to the impossibility of accessing filming in Cuba, primarily due to political and cultural contradictions between the two countries. Puerto Rico, Paraguay, Mexico, and other Caribbian and Latin American countries have served as substitute settings in the creation of an imaginary Nation, a visual souvenir that confuses geography and memory.
In Stage 3 of the series, presented at Kunsthall 3,14 Martín uses the effect of the camera lens to enclose selected fragments of frames from these films, proposing incomplete spaces and fragmented memories, and juxtaposing contexts belonging to diverse fictions. The artifice is revealed: they are borrowed landscapes, inappropriate versions of the island.
In Marianela Orozco’s (1973) video performance Directed Dream, the artist’s body becomes that of a marionette—a puppet manipulated by strings. In societies where expression is carefully contained, individuals may begin to monitor themselves—not only their words and gestures, but dreams, where even the subconscious drifts toward what is permitted.
In The Hours, salt in the artist’s hands may refer to the historical burden carried by women in Cuban society – like Lot’s wife in the biblical story, who was turned into a pillar of salt for disobeying divine command. Despite notable progress in many areas, women remain bound by a patriarchal system in Cuba, often positioned at the center of domestic life. Creating space for multiple interpretations, the grains of salt in Orozco’s piece are both guided by the hands and resisting containment.
Typologies of an Idea by Pablo Bordon kicks off by challenging any existing ideologies and questioning absence of groundbreaking ideas, such as “The Eureka” moments, in the contemporary era. Confronted with this idea, the artist opted to gather broken and malfunctioning light bulbs – objects that have forfeited their capacity to emit light and consequently lost their original purpose. These items are subsequently captured through photography, with their state symbolizing the absence of light. By displaying these photographs as works of art, the intention is to assign them value in a different context, prompting viewers to contemplate the transformation of ordinary objects into entities that surpass their initial utility.
Reinaldo Cid’s (b. 1987) unfolding envelopes, titled P.D., present earthworks—large-scale operations involving the movement of soil—carried out by a military construction company in Cuba. The deconstructed landscapes propose questions about the uncertainty surrounding military activity and its often-irreversible environmental consequences. Extensive operations in militarized societies can cause serious harm through contamination from explosives, deforestation, and habitat deconstruction.
The book HE B K F HE DEAD in the wall vault, and the flag Whispers, presented on the façade of Kunsthall 3,14, invite the spectator into an act of reconstruction. The book, originally intended as a guide for facing death, becomes a creative act that brings new life to words and meanings through each individual reading. Erasing some of the letters and working with a deconstructed alphabet, Cid leaves the reader to fill in the empty spaces. Concealing but suggesting, art operates poetically between the lines.
In the series Political Creation, Levi Orta reproduces paintings and drawings made by world leaders. The process of copying these often-amateur works by the world’s most famous heads of states acts as a critical magnifying glass to analyze the nuances regularly overlooked by the media. Some of the politicians whose work Orta is studying include Donald Trump, Fidel Castro, George W. Bush, Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Francisco Franco, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Alberto Fujimori, Vladimir Putin, and Hugo Chavez.
The installation Artwork donation to a political art museum follows the bureaucratic paths of censorship in Cuba. The secret intelligence and counterintelligence center of the Cuban Ministry of the Interior has agents who oversee and control all the cultural activities held in the country. Using counterespionage techniques, Orta infiltrated a politically charged artwork in the Ministry of the Interior files.
Curated by Malin Barth
Commissioned text by Sarah-Lis Muniz-Bueno Aljovín:
Dichrostachys Cinerea: Resilient Roots in a Shared Cuba
Commissioned text by Nelson Herrera Ysla: