Thursday, September 20, 2018 @ 6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. | Overlook Gallery
José Bedia and Alejandro Figueredo will discuss their work in the exhibition Cubans: Post Truth, Pleasure, and Pain and participate in a moderated conversation about artistic practice, particularly its cultural, political and social aspects.
This talk is made possible with support from Duke University Forum for Scholars and Publics.
José Bedia was born in 1959 in Havana. He excelled in illustration, drawing, and comics from a young age and joined the San Alejandro Fine Arts Academy in Havana as a teenager where he honed his formal skills. After his training and education at San Alejandro, he graduated with honors at the Instituto Superior de Arte, Havana. Throughout his prolific career, he has been a long-standing pioneer in transforming Cuban Art, integrating his passions for anthropological studies on Afro-Transatlantic and Amerindian cultures as well as his own deep faith-based studies in La Regla Kongo, in which he was initiated in 1983. His works, which he defines as cultural "storytelling," are in many private and public collections such as Museo Nacional Palacio de Bellas Artes, Havana, MoMA, The Metropolitan Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Guggenheim,Tate Modern, Smithsonian Museum, and The Colección Daros in Zurich, among many others. In addition to his work in Cubans: Post Truth, Pleasure, and Pain, his work is also in the exhibition at Duke University's Power Plant Gallery, Visionary Aponte: Art and Black Freedom.
Alejandro Figueredo was born in Havana in 1991. While living in Havana, he received degrees from the Instituto Superior de Arte, Havana in 2010 and the San Alejandro Fine Arts Academy in 2014. As a conceptual artist, he works in a variety of media including video, photography, painting, installation, and text. The medium is dictated by the idea or investigation. Figueredo has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at Chicago Artists Coalition; Mumbai Art Room, India; the Havana Biennale; and the Davis Weinberg Gallery, Chicago. He is part of the collaborative Díaz Lewis with Cara Lewis bringing awareness to social issues through installation and video. Pillow making workshops will be held in the Central Library on September 19, 20 and 21 in the Central Library and Sept 22 at the Milton Rhodes Art Center.