Ariel Cabrera

Ariel Cabrera’s (Camagüey, Cuba, 1982) project is interested in intervening and dismantling the historical narratives of our nations from the realm of contemporary painting. For this purpose, he executes rewriting and crossing out procedures, critical readings, and fictionalizations of those gray areas pending documentation. This approach thinks of national history as a scenario of hegemonic narratives proposed by the power that will condition the image and behaviors of today’s societies. Ariel intervenes in the past at will, plays with the notion of “the legitimate” and “the real,” and weaves new relationships between history’s agents.

Cabrera selects images taken from heritage documents to enter rough areas and aspects little touched by Cuban and United States history, setting references relating to the beginnings of photography and its ways of dialogue with the painting. Besides, he proposes scenarios about military events of the struggles for Independence, creating simultaneous assumptions in historiographical discussions that subject history in general to scrutiny, where sarcasm, erotic-burlesque, and ludic are present in romantic struggles and intimate scenes shaped as campaign notes, and short stories.

This solo project brings together a body of paintings characterized by a palimpsestic and multilayered aesthetic that enables the development of small scenes apparently disconnected from each other. However, these scenes converge in the sort of Aleph that is Cabrera’s creative universe, generating unusual discursivities about the present.

Ariel Cabrera is a Cuban-American painter who harmoniously integrates his historical research and medial essay. His gaze is interested in the minor detail, the human and silenced part of the hero that constitutes the reality of all human life. His is a pictorial epic of a new type, where the ordinary man takes the place of the fictional character.

Cabrera’s pictorial work is heir to the genre of historical painting. However, the operations that take place in his oeuvres are eminently postmodern. 

After graduating from the Higher Institute of Art (ISA) in Havana (2004), Ariel has participated in numerous personal and collective exhibitions, including A Swim I am Pond in the Rain, Galleria Mazzoli, Berlin, Germany; Escenas Secundarias, GE Galería, Monterrey, Mexico; New Works, Galleria Mazzoli, Modena, Italy; Parallels & Peripheries, New York Academy of Art, New York, USA; Kindred Spirits, Ten Artist by the Hudson, Coral Gables Museum, Miami, USA; Cubans: Post-truth, Pleasure and Paint, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), Winston, USA; All that you have is your Soul, Factionart projects, Coates and Scarry Gallery, London/ Los Angeles / New York; Good the Last Drop, Artium Gallery, Miami, USA; Emerging to Established, The Krause Gallery, New York, USA; Resilencias. La otra Cuba, Art District, Minnesota, USA; Cachita, The Infinite Lightness of Being, The Olga M. Saladrigas Gallery, Miami, USA. He has also collaborated with the New York Academy of Art in Manhattan and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) in New York, USA.

Cabrera is part of relevant collections such as those of the Pérez Art Museum (PAMM), Miami; the Beth Rudin DeWoody, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art of Americas (MoCA), Miami; the Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia; The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), North Carolina; United Stated Embassy Madrid Art Collection, Madrid; Massimo Bottura, Modena; and El Espacio 23, Miami.