I am a LatinX emerging visual artist working in multiple disciplines, most recently in sculpture and installation. As a refugee from Cuba in the late 1960s, I have witnessed the effects of ongoing colonization of the Global South, which often culminates in injustices against migrants in the United States. I strive to subvert the colonial archive in my art and also attempt to subvert the tools of the colonizer. To this end, I delve deeply into social justice issues—not only colonization and migration, but also issues of medical ethics and women’s reproductive issues. As a former medical doctor, I have studied and witnessed the inequities that exist in access to medical care among White people and People of Color. I am also concerned about the erosion of women’s sovereignty over their bodies in the current climate in Florida and throughout the United States. These concerns/“inquietudes” have manifested in many ways in recent years, including charcoal drawings and sculptures of Morion helmets used by Spanish conquistadores that are taken over by creatures representing their subjects. I have collaborated with dancers who have smashed and, later, restored my Cuban-style ceramic tiles representing Cuba. I have created sculptures of medical tools like the speculum used to experiment on enslaved Black women in the antebellum South. While my work captures the histories of social and medical injustices, it has gradually been shifting to celebrating the successes of and on behalf of women.
