Heidi Cho Gallery is pleased to present Cuba Untitled II, a group exhibition by thirteen artists of Cuban origin: Alejandro Aguilera, Néstor Arenas, Cesar Beltrán, Pepe Franco, Ana Albertina Delgado, Carlos Quintana, Alejandro López, Clara Morera, Segundo Planes, Marta María Pérez, Carlos Rodríguez Cárdenas, Joel Rojas, and Rubén Torres Llorca.

Since its inception Heidi Cho Gallery has focused on working with contemporary artists, helping them to articulate a dynamic dialogue within today’s art world. With Cuba Untitled in 2004, the gallery invited a group of young artists of Cuban background to exhibit. Cuba Untitled II follows this path, welcoming works by a significant group of artists who have completed their studies in Cuba.

Many of the artists taking part in this exhibition have helped to shape the well-known “80’s Generation” in Cuban art, a period in which longstanding artistic norms were overturned in a bold assault upon the establishment. The artists have in common their key role in defining the landscape of visual arts on the island, through art that has challenged commonly held perceptions of Cuban-ness while drawing upon larger theoretical currents operating within the international arts community. These artists look both inward and out, in a dialectical process that has created works of invention, humor and surprise.

Cuba Untitled II covers a period which stretches over twenty years, offering a reflection of several mediums ranging from painting and sculpture to photography and video. The goal of the exhibition is to celebrate and explore the diversity of these artists’ creations, while working to shed light upon how they have verbalized their individual poetics within the contemporary art spectrum. What unites them, beyond ties of cultural origin, is the struggle to define identity within an often fragmented world, one in which the concept of being Cuban is forever mediated by a range of social, political and human factors. With an organizational ethic based on creation, questioning, and exchange, Cuba Untitled II seeks to move toward a new understanding of Cuban-ness, one which encompasses all the rich variety and contradiction of the Cuban artistic experience.