ROBERTO DIAGO
HAVANA, 1971
The use of found materials as a compositional necessity has marked Roberto Diago’s work throughout his career as a creator. His interest in reusing objects perhaps finds its highest point in his installation art; in this sense, he has been creating a series of magical cloths that transcend due to their formal and symbolic richness. Tapestries in African religiosity hide offerings and deities, Diago’s do not cease to be enigmatic to articulate discourses, each fragment of wood is already a sign, a story, the vestiges of a door, a house or a neighborhood.
These stelae of colors consolidate the idea of recomposing a broken, shattered world. They synthesize one of the facets of Diago’s production, which consists of showing from the self-referential, the reality of Afro-descendant and disadvantaged communities in contemporary Cuba.
Juan Roberto Diago Durruthy: Painter, sculptor, installation artist. Graduate of the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts in 1990. Among his solo exhibitions are: Diago: The Post of this Afro-Cuban Present, AMA Museum, Washington DC, 2024, Juan Roberto Diago: Foraged Materials Assembled Histories, Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Missouri, 2024. La Oscuridad fue el Principio, Casa de América, Madrid, 2023; Diago: Un arte para todos los tiempos, Martinique, 2023. Testigo del Tiempo, Galería Artizar, Tenerife, 2022. Homenaje, Galeria Villa Manuela, La Habana, 2020, Diago: The Past of this Afro-Cuban Present, Ethelberth Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art, Harvard University, Boston, 2017.
He has participated in national and international group exhibitions, including: NDAFFA. 14th Dakar Biennial, Senegal; La Posibilidad Infinita. Pensar la Nación. Exposición Nada Personal, XIII Havana Biennial, National Museum of Fine Arts, 2019. Artes de Cuba, From the Island to the World, The John F Kennedy Center, Washington, 2018. Inaugural Exhibition, Museum of Black Civilizations, Dakar, 2018. Tiempo de la Intuición. Viva Arte Vivo, Venice Biennale, 2017. Tiempos Modernos, UNESCO, Paris, 2015.
Collections: National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana. Cernuda Arte, USA. DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Greece. The von Christiersons’s Collection, CIFO Collection USA. Pizzuti Collection USA, HGN/HGN Collection, Alemania. Zabludowicz Collection, Inglaterra. Boston Fine Arts Museum, USA. Jorge M. Pérez Collection, USA. Museo de las Civilizaciones Negras, Dakar. Fondation Clément. Colección Kells, España. Fundación María Cristina Masaveu Peterson.