Kcho was born in 1970, in Ilha da Juventude, in Cuba. In 1986, he enrolled in the Painting and Sculpture degree, at Escuela Nacional de Arte, in Havana, where he presently lives and works. He completed the course in 1990 and immediately became known in Cuba and abroad. His practice extends to various media, although it manifests one same theme: the use of a boat, as formal motive and metaphor for the migration movements of the Cuban population. In the large-scale sculptures, this poetic materializes through the recycling of detritus, such as bottles and pieces of wood found in docks, to which an imagistic with connections to local traditional icons is added. In the drawings and paintings, this happens through sidereal atmospheres and dramatic scenes, obtained by means of gestural figuration. After he received the Ludwig Foundation scholarship, 1994, the Grand Prize of the Kwang Ju Biennial, 1995 and the Prize for the Promotion of Arts, UNESCO, 1995, Kcho had numerous exhibitions. The following solo exhibitions stand out: Todo Cambia, Contemporary Art Museum, Los Angeles, 1977; Archipiélago de mi pensamento: American Series – I Kcho, Jeu de Paume, Paris, 1998; La columna infinita, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2000; La jungla, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana/GAM, Turin, 2001-02 and Strange Day at the Beach, Centro de las Artes de San Agustin, Oaxaca, 2014. The group exhibitions include: Arte Nuevo de Cuba, Whitechapel Gallery, London; Dark Art’98, Dakar; Venice Biennale, 1999; The Maps of Desire, Kunsthalle Vienna, 1999; NeeHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith, P.S. 1, New York, 2008; Integration and Resistance in the Global Age, 10th Havana Biennial, 2009. His work is represented in the collections of Galerie National du Jeu de Paume, Paris; Gwanjgiu Museum, Gwangiu; National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana; MoMA, New York; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo per l’Arte, Turin, among others.
SN, November 2021
