ORDEN INCONCLUSO

Carlos Garaicoa (La Habana, 1967) is a key figure among Latin-American artists from the 90’s. He is also a reference both inside and outside of Cuba when it comes to  understanding artistic discourses through the globalization of Cuban art that started that same decade. Since then, his work has continued to revolve around social, economic and political change resulting from the history of the 20th century. This change is codified in an urban territory that becomes a field of study: architecture and urbanism are the two main focus of attention.

Garaicoa has been living in Madrid for almost 9 years and he has a studio both in Ma-drid and in La Habana. Therefore, he is an artist who has developed his practice in two specific geopolitical moments and situations, and this fact is the starting point for this exhibition. Orden Inconcluso (Unfinished order) is the first project dealing with these two contexts that the author knows first-hand by his daily life experiences. On the one hand, there is his artistic development stage in a country such as Cuba marked by con-tradictions among social movements and utopic values which have affected some of the hopes in the system; and on the other hand, there is his current confrontation with a Southern European country like Spain, and in particular with a city like Madrid, which reflects the ending of utopia from the opposite point of view: that of late-capitalist societies and the wish of social welfare. These two opposite poles get together within archi-tectural practices and are reflected in a city that works as a background: a theatrical play where all the action choreographies cry for the loss of a project among demonstra-tions, graffiti, words and actions that vindicate citizens ‘emotions.

The project recovers a word polluted by its many meanings, a word that disturbs Garaicoa himself: Order. The goal is that this Order is destroyed, transcended,  criticized, destabilised... Even if Order can be of a political, religious, economic or ar-chitectural nature, when we wander through Orden Inconcluso (Unfinished Order) we face something that repeats itself and never closes. Something unstable and that is deployed in the series of works created by the artist since the 90’s until now, building bridges between Castro’s Cuba and architectural utopias to go through economic value and finally be placed in this Europe weighed down by a recession where its powers are supported by the imperative of a fake European identity that leaves individual power in the hands of macro-finances. In this sense, hypothesis from the philosopher Michel Foucault hang over the exhibition, since a relation is established between the great social projects of Cuban revolutionary architecture and the new macro-economic archi-tectures and urban micro-realities. The project deals with economic macro-structures and micro-demands from the city, citizens and society in a parallel play.

Orden Inconcluso (Unfinished Order) aims at drawing a conceptual line between the different decades of Carlos Garaicoa’s work. Works that share economy and architec-ture understood as power, control and utopia have been carefully selected. Also, the exhibition offers the opportunity to see a few project-specific works that try to define and to dig into the artist’s intention to find a connection between the political and eco-nomic realities that he has experienced.

Agustín Pérez Rubio
Curator