MOGOTES, 2025

Morphism of collapse, solitude, and silence.

Topography of Memory

Rubert G Quintana

The architecture in Mogotes arises from a combination of memory and projection. I work with everyday materials and with structures that allude to conflict, loss, and displacement. Each construction functions as a condensation of traumas, events, and recollections that I recognize as part of a collective memory.

Displacement, understood as forced migration, implies abandoning family, home, property, and projects in order to face an unknown territory with new rules and cultural barriers. In that passage, many lives are interrupted or suspended. That fracture is the starting point of these works.

Home appears as the central symbol: homeland, family, refuge, legacy, culture, and belonging. Ruin, the absence of human figures, the apparent constructive chaos, and a flat coastal environment place the object at the core. This combination evokes a possible geography, recognizable architectural references, and questions about the function and logic of inhabiting.

This is not a nihilistic proposal nor an exercise in fantasy. The project rests on a concrete operation: representing fears, traumas, and uncertainties to make them visible, nameable, and eventually transformable. We all carry a portion of interior ruin; by displacing it into an external structure, the work offers a space in which to observe and reconfigure it.

Rubert G Quintana

"Mogotes" is, ultimately, an inquiry into the fractured foundations of a society marked by empty promises, corruption, and structural erosion. Drawing from the personal experience of isolation and loss, the project questions the fragility of civilized life and of the very idea of belonging in a context where collapse—of systems, of human relations, and of our ties to the land—has become a permanent global condition.

The pieces engage with the history of human construction understood as an act of resistance: building a home, a sanctuary, or a bunker to protect a legacy. Mogotes takes its name from geological formations that rise from flat terrain and withstand erosion for thousands of years. In a similar way, these precarious and wounded architectures stand as monuments to resilience: accumulations of frustration and loss that nonetheless remain upright and open a narrow space for hope.

PALMAS REALES

Project
Palmas Reales

Main role
Oil / Canvas

Date
17/8/2002

La Palma Real is the national tree of Cuba, my home country. Many artists and writers have succumbed to its charm and majesty. Two of the pillars of Cuban literature, José María Heredia and José Martí, used it as a symbol of Woman, Homeland, Singularity, and Elegance.

Roystonea regia, commonly known as the Cuban royal palm or Florida royal palm, is a species of palm tree native to Mexico, the Caribbean, Florida, and parts of Central America.

I use the image of the royal palm to illustrate the lives of displaced and oppressed Cubans, forced to emigrate or survive in the most austere conditions. These individuals often find themselves in sensitive situations, such as prostitution, repression, coercion, or exile, in a desolate environment. Whether I depict them as withered in a vase in the style of Van Gogh, on a corner in Havana, or as far away as the North Pole or even the Moon.

Choosing the landscape is a classic choice due to the iconic nature of the "Cuban Landscape." While documentary photography may seem more precise or appropriate for exposing this reality, I opt for oil on canvas, creating appealing images because of the detachment that poverty, repression, and disillusionment images can cause in the viewer in the era of social media.

This way, I can address very delicate issues without raising alarms, ultimately leading the observer to the same reflection as they imagine or discover the scene.

"Como novias que esperan" is a series of paintings that reflect the impoverished life in Cuba and prostitution as an alternative to escape the country or at least address some of the economic needs. The title comes from a speech by José Martí given to the audience in Tampa in 1891: "Las palmeras son novias que esperan," which translates to "The palm trees are brides waiting."

Basic Rhetoric Show

Technique

Various

Date

23/3/2010

Basic Rhetoric is a personal exposition full of allusions and sarcasm

Summarize a series of citations of art history from the Michelangelo's Adam's Creation, Marat Death, Magritte's Pipe, Manzoni's Artist Shit, Andy Warhol's Dick Tracy and even the recent speech of Barbara Kruger or Jenny Holzer to dismantle the retrograde doctrine of Castro's Cuba and show his origin, passions and the aversion to the dictatorship.