What it is, what it has been is a monumental sculpture deriving its form from the statue of Jose Marti in Havana’s Plaza de la Revolucion (renamed from Plaza Civica in 1961). Marti, a Cuban nationalist and a philosopher of Radical Liberalism, was a revered figure in the struggle for Cuban independence and an architect of the Cuban Revolutionary Party’s platform. The Plaza’s statue was originally crafted by Juan Jose Sicre in 1958 and remains one of the most well-known works of Cuban Modern civic sculpture. Novo’s sculpture is the result of taking a replica of the head of the statue (at its original scale of 3m x 2m x 2m) and applying 382 successive layers of overlapping paint on the model. This process of consecutively “retouching” the model blurs and erodes the iconic image of Marti, denaturalizing the man and emptying the model of meaning.
Monuments have broad and diverse connotations in different cultural traditions. However, they are all connected by the will of remembrance, or rather, the perpetuation of historical memory and the codification of certain frameworks for understanding everyday reality. Thus, monuments are the material symbols of ideological, historical, and territorial affiliations -- affiliations that strive to be fixed and reified in the collective conscious as given axiomatic truth. Put simply, monuments attempt to make a given historical narrative (and its way of making sense of the world) as solid and unchanging as the monument itself.
In moments of rethinking cultural and political realities, monuments are the first things to be demolished only to be replaced by new epochal icons. Novo’s sculpture foregrounds a separate but parallel process – one that uses national symbols as subterfuges for liberticidal policies that immobilize, censor, and exclude. National memory, despite any revolutionary or radical origins, is also a device in service of maintaining status quo power structures.
16.5 x 13.3 x 13.3 in (42 x 34 x 34 cm)
About the Artist
About the Exhibitor
Reynier Leyva Novo (1983, Cuba) is one of Cuba’s leading conceptual artists. Working across media, Novo combines anthropological research with cutting-edge technology to examine the psychological and sociological effects of complex issues throughout the history of Cuba and the Caribbean. He develops his projects through mining historical data and official documents, transforming their contents into minimalist and conceptually charged sculptures and multimedia installations that are at once visually engaging and intellectually provocative.
Novo’s work challenges ideology and symbols of power, questioning notions of an individual’s ability to affect change. Among the artist’s most recognized series is The Weight of History (2014-5), a project in which he actualized a software to compute the mass and volume of ink used to print key ideological texts underpinning five totalitarian regimes that shaped the 20th century, including Cuba. Novo’s commitment to deconstructing myths while highlighting the fragments of reality and lived experiences that generate them has led him to political activism through art. Participating in the ongoing social movement in Cuba working to reclaim freedom of expression as well as civic and political rights, he is an active member of the artist-activist group 27N.
In 2022, Novo moved his family to the U.S. from Cuba, and is currently living in Houston, Texas. This year, he plans to begin a residency as a Smithsonian Institution Artist Research Fellow at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, in Washington, DC. This research project stems from the investigation for his project Patria, muerte y azúcar / Homeland, death and sugar (Havana Biennial 2019), which addresses the transatlantic slavery system developed by European colonial powers, the racial dimension to the slave-slaver's logic, and the institutionalization of the estrangement of the other and its cultural diversity.
Novo’s work is part of the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY, USA; Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO), Tabacalera Building, Madrid, Spain; Colección de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colombia; Farber Collection, New York, NY, USA; Fundación María Cristina Masaveu Peterson, Asturias, Spain; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C., USA; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Eugene, OR, USA; MISOL Art Foundation, Bogotá, Colombia; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), TX, USA; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), FL, USA; Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH, USA; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
More About the Program
What it is, what it has been is a winner of the Pommery Prize at The Armory Show, Platform Session, New York, 2022.
The 10-foot-tall final piece was sculpted in Styrofoam by two Kuka robots from digital 3D scanning of the painted bust. Eight joined foam blocks make up the solid volume of the sculpture. A layer of Aquaresin and fiberglass covers the sculpture’s polyfoam base, making it waterproof and providing outdoor resistance in the most extreme climates. Polyfoam resists thermal parameters from –200°C to +135°C without modifying its structure. Aqua-Resin is a water based, non-toxic, sculpting resin. This water-based material is used in fiberglass reinforced laminating for permanent in all interiors as well as most exterior applications.
