Two Citizens of Utopia: Ibrahim Miranda and Douglas Pérez

Collective exhibition, until October 2012.

The 8^th Floor Gallery in New York keeps on giving pride of place to Cuban artists. Ibrahim Miranda and Douglas Pérez plunge the viewer in a new geography, on the trail of an unreal and fantasized city. Two citizens of utopia is a painting exhibition dealing with the theme of the imagined urban space. Ibrahim Miranda presents his long stripped serigraphs realized on maps of Cuba. He mentioned these works when we interviewed him in La Havana. The Cuban island present on the maps disappears under these serigraphs turning it into an “animal”. Ibrahim Miranda draws a utopic world where the real borders fades into the imagined ones, he creates a new mapping of his country.

: Ibrahim Miranda, Exhibition view, Two Citizens of Utopia © Ibrahim Miranda

As for Douglas Perez, he represents a transformed Havana, sometimes unrecognizable. He offers a new reading of the city, far from the traditional representations. The two artists play with our stereotypes to show a capital city and a utopic island- which seem to only exist in a secret geography. Elements of the influence of other cultures are shown in the artworks of each artist and are a reflection of the evolutions that Cuba has been undergoing these last few last years.