En ningún lugar como en casa

The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Cuba presented En ningún lugar como en casa (Nowhere Like Home), a major retrospective exhibition marking three decades of artistic production by Kcho, coinciding with the artist’s 50th birthday.

The exhibition brought together large-scale works constructed from perishable materials — branches, wood, reclaimed boat fragments, and assembled structures — elements that have consistently defined Kcho’s sculptural language. Many of these works had traveled internationally before returning to Havana, where they were recontextualized within a national institutional framework.

More than a formal survey, the exhibition functioned as an act of return. Several of the pieces had been carefully preserved by the artist in his own domestic environment, underscoring a persistent dialogue between home, memory, and artistic production. Their presentation within the museum space invited a renewed reflection on belonging, displacement, and the symbolic construction of nationhood.

At a moment marked by social and historical tension, the retrospective responded to an urgent need to reflect deeply on the idea of the nation. In this sense, the exhibition did not merely revisit an individual career; it articulated a broader meditation on collective memory, material fragility, and the ethical dimension of artistic practice.

Heritage

1989

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Corina Matamoros states: “First of all, Kcho as an artist begins in the 1990s by working with national symbols and creates his first flag using branches and fabric. At the beginning he titled it Herencia (Heritage), but everyone called it La bandera (The Flag), and that ultimately became its definitive name. It is made of branches, his mother’s house robe, and her scarf. When an adolescent creates a flag like that, it becomes eternal. It is a symbol of a nation, but it is also a symbol of his own life.”

The curator argues that Kcho has always been speaking to Cuba: “A 20-year-old young man — what kind of maturity does he have to address a country as an equal? And yet he did. He was able to do so because of his training and because of his parents’ vocation of service. I believe that in this sense Kcho has never changed; he has always looked at Cuba from the perspective of someone who constantly moved between Havana and the Isle of Youth (his birthplace). That continuous movement early on connected him to the sea, to our condition as an island — one of the recurring themes in his work.”

(by Maribel Acosta Damas)

The best of the summer

1994

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Maribel Acosta Damas – ¿Toda esta obra es nueva?

Kcho– No. Para nada. Aquí hay obras nuevas y hay obras que tienen 30 años.

Maribel A– ¿Y dónde estaban?

Kcho– Estaban guardadas. Hay obras aquí de las que nunca me he separado como Lo mejor del verano, que la ha querido hasta el MOMA…

La peor de las trampas

1990

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Kcho: When I presented my exhibition at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid in 2000, a well-known Spanish critic asked me what I would be doing at 50 years old, if I was already such a young guy exhibiting there…

I said, well, I hope life gives me the opportunity to do an even better exhibition in Cuba… That’s what I was thinking — because I’m a romantic!!!!

Why do you think I have treasured these works? Because I’m crazy? Because I’m a compulsive hoarder? Why have I kept them?

Because I am convinced they belong to Cuba — that they tell such an important part of our history that they have no reason to be elsewhere.

Since I was very young, thanks to many factors, I learned the value of things. That is why I preserved them.

Today that work is here, in this exhibition, in this Museum. There are now proposals for it to travel to several countries — but it has to be handled carefully…

The hook looks like Cuba

1991

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Kcho (smiles)… I made that piece when I was 21 years old… I was sitting in my room — I’m a big fan of libraries — reading… and suddenly I found myself with a scribble in my hand… I was in the middle of this exploration about insularity, and all of a sudden I looked at the scribble and realized it was identical to the island, and I started laughing — such a warm, joyful smile!

A los ojos de la historia

1992

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Kcho: And this other work is A los ojos de la historia (In the Eyes of History). It was 1991… Just think — how many things were happening! How much the world was changing!

This piece emerged from a very thorough investigation I carried out into an artist I greatly admire from Russian Constructivism, Vladimir Tatlin, and his work Monument to the Third International — a design that was never actually built, but whose model became a symbol and was carried, paraded during May Day demonstrations, and so on…

When 1991 arrived, everything fell apart — it was the end of an era. So I wanted to do something with Tatlin’s work, and I got to work. I took marabú branches and set myself the task of “impoverishing” Tatlin, of creolizing the spiral — I had already found the solution to my socialism!

Then I said, let’s strain coffee through it now… there’s the filter — and I turned Tatlin’s spiral into a coffee strainer.

La Regata

1993

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Kcho: La regata began like this: In 1993, I submitted a proposal to the Havana Biennial — to organize a real regatta along the Malecón, which I would call El balsero de oro (The Golden Rafter). It was not accepted, and from that idea I began constructing an installation.

When I created La regata in 1993, the 1994 rafter crisis had not yet happened… It was exhibited at the Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales. Later, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Cuba acquired it, but some pieces were lost because, at the Centro, people started taking the little boats as souvenirs, and so on…

It originally had 96 small boats. I began reconstructing it, and it evolved into the regatta that everyone knows today — incorporating objects and additional elements… it eventually gave rise to another work.

(…)

MA: Tell me about all the burdens of your island — of Cuba…

K: Look, Maribel, I was 21 years old… No one in Cuba was doing what I was doing. I appeared on the international art scene… Suddenly people were asking me about Cuba, and I have never hidden from saying what I think about Cuba…

Do you know the story about the day MoMA bought my second work? They told me, “Please don’t tell anyone.” There was a hidden celebration, as if we were terrorists. Do you know why? Because there is a mistaken illusion that a Cuban artist at MoMA after Lam must be an exile.

No. It was me — a son of Fidel… Imagine being punished for that!

I was only granted a visa to travel to the United States in 1996. I have been two more times. How? I went with Raúl Castro to the United Nations and to the flag ceremony at the Cuban embassy there.

Selected Works

1994

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Kcho: There is a work of mine called Obras escogidas (Selected Works), made from the books that accompanied me during a long period of my life. It includes school books — there are atlases, a book on political relations between Cuba and the United States… a Mathematics book, a Physics book… there’s Corazón… books filled with notes… For example, Corazón is full of annotations… it doesn’t matter — I had it in my hands back then, and I drew in it.

So I have this relationship with books… Sometimes you feel that certain books are no longer necessary, and I have given them away — to the Library of the Isle of Youth and to other libraries across Cuba… There are only two things I buy in life: art materials and books.

(He looks at the book.) … It’s not the same holding this in your hands — it’s like a house with open doors — it has a smell, a sensation, a weight… I spend a lot of time in libraries… not only to make art… Sometimes you study things because you have to… Humanity did not change because it hunted a goat; it changed because it painted it on the wall of a cave… I really enjoy discovering ideas within the ideas of others. I’m a devotee of Fernando Ortiz — everything is there in his work…

MA: Do you discover more ideas in literature or in the visual arts themselves?

K: More in literature. And for example… look, you’ve touched on a subject no one ever asks me about… I believe ideas are in the air… I don’t think ideas are inappropriate just because someone else has already worked on them… I always tell my students, when I’ve taught, not to feel intimidated by historical references… The best example is portraiture — how much it has changed throughout history!… I observe things, ideas, and the lives of others…

(…)

Maribel A.: … Corina Matamoros tells me (it is a sunny afternoon at her house in La Víbora):

“Kcho is distinctly an artist of the 1990s generation, where the analysis of migration is crucial because of the historical events that shaped art during that period… and Kcho speaks to Cuba as an equal. Cuba is not an abstraction for him; it is not a sweetened notion of homeland… In this way, he modifies how Cuba is valued.

This exhibition expresses deep love for Cuba — but not a cheap or unconditional love. It is a love that rises above mistakes. It is a love of understanding, one that reaches essential things — those Cuba cannot afford to lose, such as its independence.

This work demonstrates art’s capacity to show us the best paths toward freedom… without empty political rhetoric. Speaking about himself, about the sea, about Haiti; speaking about love and the mysteries of an island — one can reach what is essential, without unnecessary rhetoric, through a direct, face-to-face communication.

I think it is fantastic that this exhibition has been made at this moment. By those coincidences of life, it has been the perfect moment.”