Las verdades de Cuba
(cut-out paper – Silhouettes from the official Cuban newspaper Granma. Each sheet has been independently glued to canvas before being cut.
160 x 240 cm, 2013
„Las Verdades de Cuba“ (2013) challenges the authority of official discourse in both form and content. The piece intervenes with the newspaper Granma – the official publication of the Cuban regime – and consists of three pre-cut layers of Granma arranged in 16 rectangular blocks. This composition evokes the solidity and rigidity of Soviet architecture, so distinctive to the island, as well as the monolithic nature of power narratives. The decontextualization of headlines and images creates new associations between humor and cynicism, suggesting that any official narrative can be rewritten or reinterpreted.
The intervention of cut-outs and blank spaces, combined with the irony of the title – taken from a 2012 headline – exposes the fragility of the ‚truths‘ propagated by the regime.
By exposing the mechanisms of propaganda, the work invites us to reconsider the role of the media in shaping national identity and collective memory. Finally, the precarious nature of the medium (cheap, aged paper) reinforces the idea that neither propaganda nor the medium that disseminates it can indefinitely withstand the passage of time and the scrutiny of a critical eye.
This work was the first in a series I began in 2012, using the practice of cutting into newspapers as a way of intervening in and reconstructing visual discourse. In 2013 I had the opportunity to exhibit it in the group show Wahala at SAVVY Contemporary Berlin, in its former location in the Neukölln district.