Havana, (ACN).- Cuban-American artist Tony Labat will exhibit his works for the first time on the island.

 

The exhibition will be inaugurated on Friday, June 25, at the Wilfredo Lam Contemporary Art Center in this capital.

Entitled Es lo que es (It's what it is), the exhibition is a retrospective of pieces created between 1977 and 2010, with Felipe Dulzaides and Jorge Antonio Fernandez as curators.

Some of the works I was asked for this exhibition no longer existed, because they were pieces created for certain contexts, said Labat. This represented the opportunity of creating new visions of ideas I had a long time ago, and of turning my pieces into unique works for this occasion, he added.

A provocative artist, rebellious within the structures of the US art institution, Labat does research into identity, and he?s also attracted by social prejudices and taboos and politics.

He shows special interest in the human body and its possibilities for expression, and uses the carnival aesthetics as a conceptual base, which, according to critics, marks the continuity of his creation.

Surveillance in modern societies is another of the topics this artist tends to reflect, by way of using videos as one of the main media for his artistic work.

Over the last three decades, Labat has exhibited his works internationally, and his influence has marked several generations of artists, both in the United States and in other countries.

At present, he heads the department of new means of the San Francisco Art Institute, in which he has carried out a praiseworthy pedagogical work.