Permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
In his work Kcho engages with the politics and living conditions in Cuba, playing with the notion of a socialist utopia in a Communist country. This drawing demonstrates Kcho's ability to reimagine nonfunctional architecture—in this case the Russian avant-garde artist Vladimir Tatlin's Monument to the Third International of 1919–20—as an effective utilitarian machine. A cone-shaped coffee filter sits at the top of a curvilinear structure of intertwined twigs and wires; to the left is a detail drawing of the mesh filter with coffee grounds in it. With written descriptions Kcho reiterates the materials to be used for transforming what he has called a "utopian socialist symbol that doesn't work" into a functional device—a drip coffeemaker. The drawing relates to a sculpture of the same title that Kcho made in 1992 from found materials—driftwood and twine with a coffee filter on top — from his native island. Like the drawing, it was made during Cuba’s "Special Period," a time of severe economic crisis after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the onset of the United States–enforced economic embargo.
Publication excerpt from The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights since 1980, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2007, p. 104.
