Cuba Talks: Cuban Art Beyond Borders

Laura Salas Redondo (1988) lives and works between Havana and Paris. She has curated several projects for the 12th Havana Biennial. She has worked with artists such as Michelangelo Pistoletto, Daniel Buren, Shilpa Gupta, Elizabet Cerviño, José Yaque, elpuente_lab, Susana Pilar, Gabriela & Greta Reyna, Carlos Martiel, etc. She has been coordinating Michelangelo Pistoletto's Rebirth/Third Paradise Embassy in Cuba since 2014. She has curated Rebirth Forum Habana since 2015. She co-curated Pistoletto's solo exhibition at Cuba's National Museum of Fine Arts. She has curated exhibitions at ICIVenice in Venice, "¿Soy Cuba?" in Milan, "Les Villes Invisibles" in Havana, "Casa Eminente" and "Kaléidoscopes.Cuba: Regards contemporains"" in Paris, etc. She is a member of the editorial board of the magazine PoyLatam and collaborates with ArtNexus. She published the book "Cuba Talks" with Jérôme Sans. She wrote the catalogue text for Osvaldo González's solo exhibition at NC Arte in Bogotá. One of her texts was included in the compilation of critical accounts of Cuban art "Lenguaje Sucio". She wrote the text and interviews for the book "El color en el espacio" of Carlos Cruz Diez for Frieze Masters, London in 2023. She is a member of the board of the Fondation Bernard Grau-Académie des Beaux-Arts de France for Cuban artists and is also a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA).

Patricia Diaz is an art historian, art curator, and producer residing in Miami. She graudated from University of Havana, Cuba.  She also studied English as a Second Language at the University of Delaware and holds Nonprofit Management degrees from the University of Colorado, Denver. She collaborated with the Museum of the Americas in Denver, Colorado, in the department of education and community development. Founder of the art studio NEWMEN in Havana, she deals with audiovisual and immersive technologies as well as general production and curatorship. She coordinated the Rebirth Embassy/ Third Paradise from the artist Michelangelo Pistoletto in Cuba and produced the Rebirth Forum until 2022 when she moved to Miami. Currently, she is the studio manager of the Cuban American artist Reynier Llanes and collaborates on multiple projects and with multiple institutions such as the Salamander Art Project, Catalyst Miami, Part Time Evil animation studios in Austin, among others. She was the recipient of the Cuban Leader fellowship in 2017 and the Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative fellowship in 2022 awarded by the Department of State of United Stated of America. 

Reynier Llanes is an established Cuban-American artist (b. Pinar del Rio, 1985) now based in the United States. Llanes combines and contrasts scenes from nature and daily life with a mystical and imaginative elegance. Drawing from his own memories and experience as an artist, an émigré, and an immigrant as well as his studies of literature, history, and science, Llanes invites viewers into unique dreamworlds. His explorations of personal and societal passages, both physical and spiritual, sensitively communicate common threads in humanity.  Currently living in Miami, Llanes spent six years working in Charleston.  This exhibition pulls from the artist's recent series of large-scale oil paintings, as well as his unique coffee watercolor paintings—a style he has dubbed "Espressionism."