Existing comment:
Realm, Icon, and Memory
A traditional subject depicted colonial European prints, the guajiro (peasant) plays a fundamental role in the history of Cuba. In his work, Luna revisits and reinterprets this distinctive narrative of peasant festivities, cultural traditions, and everyday life and challenges the dismissal of the influence of rural tradition on broader Cuban culture. As he recasts these rural subjects as forgotten heroes, he also reimagines political figures as caricatures. Robo-llusion challenges the iconic representation of Fidel Castro by transforming him from peasant, to ruler, to an elderly figure awaiting his end. The train's metaphorical passage of time undermines the historical archetype of an all-powerful leader.
The painting tradition of the bodegones in colonial Spain and pre-1959 Cuba, in which interior living spaces were portrayed in intimate detail, plays a strong role in the artist's vocabulary of icons. The rooster in the center of this composition as well as in El Gallo Negro (The Black Rooster) anchors the guajiro's daily routine and evokes an Ifa literary reference, the Ogun bo di ko story of Orunmila, in which a rooster divines the future and acts to protect the interior of a home.
Also alluding to the Ifa divination system central to Yoruba religious practice, the interaction between the color black and various shades of gray in Back Bite, which, like El Gallo Negro, forms part of the artist's "black series" from 2014, suggests a mysterious atmosphere in which unanswered questions abound. These graphic effects. evoke the ambience set in Yoruba moral tales and suggest the continued contemporary need for the moral archetypes. described in and ethical lessons imparted by such stories. |