Drawings

Wilfredo Prieto is an artist who has intrigued the public and critics alike, arousing growing interest ever since he appeared on the art scene at a very young age. Thanks to conceptual art projects with immense visual immediacy, tackling themes such as politics, economy, environment and, more generally, contemporary society, Prieto soon received major international recognition, such as the Cartier Foundation Award in 2008.
He studied painting at the Higher Institute of Fine Arts (ISA) in Havana, Cuba, graduating in 2002, but immediately abandoned the genre, turning instead to research free of any convention, definition, disciplinary structure, genre or artistic medium. His work now ranges from installations to performance, sculpture to environmental works, actions to drawings. Prieto is profoundly tied to his native country, with which he has maintained a critical but intense relationship. In turn, the country has recognized him as one of its most important national artists, and he has been invited to participate in the past five Havana Biennials. Cuban society provided Prieto with numerous visual and thematic cues for his work, which he then reinterpreted and projected on a vaster horizon: that of the globalized society and its production of goods, symbols and values. The starting point for his works is represented by common goods from everyday life, without making a hierarchical distinction between “poor” materials (chewed gum or a banana peel), industrial products (drums for transporting oil and cement), fruit (watermelon, mango), precious objects (gold and diamonds), and consumer goods (soft drinks and mobile phones). Prieto chooses materials and objects based on their expressive qualities and the economic, social and cultural meanings they engender, and subsequently, through an artistic gesture – often minimal – that alters their characteristics and uses, taking them out of context and generating short-circuits of meaning that surprise the spectator and beckon one to reflect.

Fanguito, 15th Bienal de la Habana, Cuba

Wilfredo Prieto participates at the Havana Biennial, with a project entitled Fanguito, which takes its name from the homonymous neighborhood that hosts it.

Fanguito subverts the traditional codes of the museum – the canonical exhibition space – the curatorial norms and the mounting processes. Under the premise of intervention-integration, Wilfredo Prieto has selected the Havana neighborhood of the same name – El Fanguito – to situate a set of works that will encompass the entire territory, from the streets to the homes. In this way, he suggests a revisitation of Duchamp’s concept of the ready-made, since for Marcel Duchamp the operation was based on extracting the object from its reality to be exhibited as art, whereas now the intention is to return it to its original medium. Thus, El Fanguito becomes a museum of contemporary art and its inhabitants become mediators.