I'm Baaaaaack!

Does anybody care?

New York was great! Did many things I have never done on previous trips. Walked to the Dumpling Man from Brooklyn, and the Dumpling Man lived up to my full expectations!

But for today's post, I want to share some culture. Finally got to the new MoMA, a great building and space. Now I am not often a photography fan, but Carlos Garaicoa does something really great with his images.

Here is one of his pieces and a little about him.


Untitled, L.A, 2004
Diptych, b/w photographs and drawings with thread
Each: 47 x 59 inches

The recent work by Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa, addresses Cuba’s politics and ideologies through the examination of modern architecture. Presenting a selection of new works created specially for the exhibition.

Organized by MOCA Associate Curator Alma Ruiz, Carlos Garaicoa features 13 works that use architectural models, renderings, drawings, videos, and photographs to articulate the failed outcome of social and architectural programs in Cuba. Adopting the city of Havana as his laboratory, Garaicoa has been working since the early 1990s using a multidisciplinary approach that includes architecture and urbanism, narrative, history, and politics. His works are charged with provocative commentary on issues such as architecture’s ability to alter the course of history, the failure of modernism as a catalyst for social change, and the frustration and decay of 20th-century utopias.

After the Cuban revolution in 1959, many architectural projects and buildings were left unfinished or abandoned in Havana as well as in other Cuban cities. Garaicoa creates a series of pop-up books depicting the decrepit turn-of-the-century buildings in Havana’s Plaza Vieja district and buildings in other cities in Towers; Plaza Vieja, Habana; Minneapolis, Mills; and New Projects (2004). In his photography series Sin título, (Arcos madera) (Untitled, Wood Arches) (2003–04); Sin título, L.A (Untitled, L.A) (2004); Sin título, Espigón (Untitled, Pier) (2001–04); and Sin Título (Edificio neoclásico)/ Untitled (Neoclassical Building) (2002–04), Garaicoa addresses the collapsed buildings in Havana by pairing black-and-white photographs with drawings made of thread rendering the reality of the absence of these structures.

About the Artist
Garaicoa was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1967, where he currently lives and works. He studied thermodynamics at the Instituto Técnico Hermanos Gómez and studied visual arts at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Cuba from 1989 to 1994. Although never formally trained as an architect, he has been an active observer of architecture and has applied this discourse to his artwork.