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NADIE ME VIO PARTIR

Jorge Luis Marrero

22 Mayo de 2015 - 22 Junio de 2015

Espacio de exhibición: Descanso de Escalera (Primer Piso)

Curaduría: José Luis Marreno

Jorge Luis Marrero’s (La Havana, 1970) No One Saw Me Leave is a project that is articulated around both the absence and presence of the artist in the 12 Havana Biennial. Coinciding with the inauguration and closing of the Biennial, Marrero traveled to Mexico City dislocating his official participation in the event to another institutional and geographical context. As testimony of the action the letter of invitation extended to the artist by the director of Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros in order to process his exit from the country, is exhibited in tandem at the Wilfredo Lam Contemporary Art Center at La Havana, Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros in Mexico City, and La Tallera in Cuernavaca.

The artist states: “My proposal for participation in the Biennial is to be absent from it. The project is composed of two parts, firs there is my intention to leave the country for the Biennial and the second more practical part is to have the support of an institution outside of the country who offers an invitation to stay with them during the event and to take care of all travel and residency costs. For several editions now, and just like many other of the world’s biennials, the Biennial has become a sort of fair of opportunities. My intent with this project is to stand for my position towards these types of events.” To welcome a project of this nature requires a reflection about how to reconcile simultaneous exercises of institutional critique that come from the artistic practice and the exhibition context. Marrero’s project is activated through one of the most forceful strategies of conceptual practice, to denote a presence by presenting an absence, radicalizing the existence of the work to be the extra-artistic experience of the artist’s travel.

 

Proyecto Siqueiros is implicit in No One Saw Me Leave, through the artist’s own doing, as the platform that materializes the action, contributing to the understanding of artistic operations that occur by ways of the piece’s immateriality and that validate critical postures with respect to the institution, independently from any kind of visual manifestations.

 

Marrero’s artistic trajectory places him as one of the most relevant artists of his generation in Cuba, in spite of not having continuous visibility in the international circuit. Without leaving behind the autobiographical tone that distinguishes his practice, most recent works run between an auto-analytical interest and the examination of his own social context.


Michele Fiedler

- Curator -

Letter