Humberto Castro: Tracing Antilles

Humberto Castro, Deconstruccion/Reconstruccion, 2013, installation with red clay, terracota shards, video monitors and Taino artifacts, variable dimensions. Courtesy of the Artist, Alfredo Carrada Collection and ArtSpace Virginia Miller Galleries.

Frost Art Museum - Miami

By Ashley Knight

This exhibition is the result of a complex process of investigation and encounter with the Caribbean undertaken by Humberto Castro, a Cuban artist who has lived outside the region for more than 20 years, first in Paris and then for more than a decade in the United States. This project is the result of the artist’s personal interest in tracing a path back to his origins, seeking to rediscover a reality that had become foreign to him after having lived for so long in other cultural contexts.

Castro began the first stage of this project by investigating Cuba and Haiti and documenting what he found along the way through video and photography. At the same time, he collected material elements characteristic of these two countries: items for domestic use, local handicrafts, religious objects and pieces of historic and artistic value. Little by little, these items expanded his personal collection, and together they constitute the material testimony of his meanderings throughout the region.

This exhibition is the first stop in a long journey that strives to gather and analyze, from a very personal perspective, the elements that typify a complex and diverse geographic area marked by the coexistence and overlap of historic times, a constant migratory flow, social upheaval and cultural and religious syncretism. Through February 2, 2014.