KCHO- The work La bandera… the flag today… with all this debate about symbols… I was 19 years old… I have always been a provocateur… and there was so much debate in Cuba about national symbols at that time as well… I was 19… I was studying academic painting… I came home… I had the devil inside me… I wanted to create a work that would touch the national symbols…
It was so frowned upon, it was so difficult at that moment, that I wanted to do it… and I did it… there it is…
So I say that the most complex and most sensitive subjects can be addressed… but if it is done with talent, with respect, with vision… it can be done…
There is La bandera, made from my school bed sheet… what did my school bed sheet contain? Everything… it was my boarding school sheet, it was alive… and also one of my mother’s house robes, with everything that belonged to her, her scarf…
It is the greatest expression of love I can offer to my homeland: to make the flag from the humblest materials…
I thought that way at 19 years old, and I still think that way today.
Kcho, 2020
Paisaje Cubano, Galería Escuela Nacional de Arte, Havana, Cuba, 1990.
Paisaje Cubano, Artist of the Month Space, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Cuba, Havana, Cuba.
Gary Nader Art Centre, Florida, United States.
Collection
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Cuba, Havana, Cuba (Permanent Collection).
