ABOUT MABEL POBLET

Living and working in Havana Cuba, Mabel Poblet is one of the most highly sought-after young artists to emerge from the contemporary Cuban art scene. After graduating from the Higher Institute of Arts, Poblet also attended the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts where she was a student of Carlos Garaicoa. In 2005, she was awarded the Prize of the Jury at the Provincial Salon of Visual Arts (Cienfuegos, Cuba) and the Prize of the Provincial Council of Visual Arts at the Salon 5 (Cienfuegos, Cuba).

ABOUT OSMEIVY ORTEGA

Living and working in Havana, Cuba with a studio on the grounds of the prestigious ISA (Instituto Superior de Arte), Osmeivy Ortega is an artist surrounded by strong cultural and physical ties to the natural world. Ortega first graduated from the ISA and is now a professor there, fostering a renewed interest in progressive printmaking techniques. Already a sensation in Cuba, Ortega has had solo exhibitions of his work in Washington DC and the Cleveland Institute of Art and as well as numerous group exhibitions within the United States as well as Mexico and Spain. His work is dominated by his connection to animals and the natural world, each “portrait” speaking to a metaphysical sense of shared emotion between animals and humans.

ABOUT ESTERIO SEGURA

Living and working in Havana, Cuba, Segura’s work forms part of the permanent collections of the MOMA in New York, the MOLAA in Los Angeles and the Latin American Art Museum in England. Segura works comfortably in nearly every medium, creating drawings that then become large-scale sculpture that speak a kind of pop-art philosophy.

He exhibits around the world, in cities such as London, Paris, Berlin, Los Angeles, New York, Barcelona, and Beirut, most recently representing Cuba in the Venice Biennial. Christies named Esterio Segura one of Six Contemporary Cuban artists you need to know about.

MABEL POBLET // Early in her career as an artist, Mabel toured the female penitentiaries in Cuba where was impacted by the silk flowers the women made as part of a labor program. That such objects of beauty could be born within this harsh environment showed the resilience and the enduring power of beauty. Often, women are put in a shallow prison in which looks are the only thing that matters, reduced to being a pair of legs or hair for a brain and disappearing as a human being. The Desapariencia (disappearance) series builds a body of provocative imagery using mosaics made up of plastic flowers as an homage to the ladies who inspired her.

INTUITION SERIES // In the series Intuition, Mabel Poblet explores in simple but powerful blocks of blue, her relationship with the ocean as a metaphor for transit, utopian journey, illusion, longing, and memory – underscoring the sea as both the boundary of her native island and its liberation. The recurring symbolism of the flowers represents in this series the life that the ocean sustains both within its depths and also for all mankind.