Initiator of a radical transformation of the Cuban Art of his time, which he inaugurated with the well-known exhibition Volumen 1 of which Bedia was a very active part. His passion for Amerindian primalist cultures was complemented by his dedicated anthropological studies in Afro-Transatlantic culture, delving from faith into the religions and beliefs of the cults of the Kongo Rule -in which he began in 1983- and the Ocha Rule, as well as the Leopard Men or Abakuas, among many others.
He traveled to Angola in the Cultural Internationalist Brigades that supported the Angolan-Cuban War against Namibia and South Africa, his contact with the Mother Continent and the War encouraged much more his concerns about the African roots of the American culture. A concern that after taking up residence outside his native country (first in Mexico and then in the USA) he has been able to deploy in countries such as Peru, Chile, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Zambia, Botswana, Kenya, and Tanzania.
This wealth of knowledge led him to produce a work that deals with how cultural heritages survive in our days and how they lift us up as citizens of today. Thanks to the strength of this work, characterized by the mixture of “fabulous stories”-which he calls: “alphabetizing lessons” – of the cosmogonic micro-universes of ancestral cultures and their roots in current popular cultures, he has participated in the Biennials of Havana, Sao Paolo, Venice, and Beijing, among many others; where he has been deserving of various awards, residencies and distinctions that place him as one of the most prestigious and relevant creators of the Art made from the Americas from the second half of the 20th century to the present.
Whether for his resolute and precise skill as a draftsman, his impressive pictorial capacity or his expansive, enigmatic and enveloping installationism. His work can be found in collections such as the Museo Nacional Palacio de Bellas Artes (Havana), as well as the MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art (NYC), the Guggenheim, the Tate Modern, the Smithsonia Museum (Washington), the Daros Collection (Zurich), the MEIAC, DA2, IVAM, CAAM (Spain), the MOCA, the MAM and the PAMM (Miami), the city where he has lived since 1993. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
