‘Power Pencils’, Paolo Maria Deanesi Gallery, Rovereto –2007

Remembering Cuba by Luiggi Meneghelli 2007. In Cuba the myths fades in the reality, dream in poverty and violence in sensuality. The Spanish philosopher Maria Zambrano once wrote: Cuba “is an island, which lightly lays on the water”: it is surrounded more by light than sea. In a drawing by Diango Hernández, it even appears as a mounting floating on the paper-ocean and watching towards …

‘Diango Hernández’ by Lisette Lagnado, text published by Phaidon in The ICE CREAM Book

Diango Hernández is the inheritor of political ambiguity: the Cuban revolution, one of the only remaining dictatorships. Over the course of half a century, Fidel Castro has come to occupy a role both of liberator (from the Batista regime) and tyrant (against the freedom of expression of his people). Hernández was born in Cuba, and has returned there regularly since 2003, when he moved to …

‘Swans without a Lake’ text by Melanie Bono –2007

The starting-point for the exhibition Swans without a lake is a story by Diango Hernández, which tells of a subversive action in which Hernández took part in 1991 at the Cine Yara, a cinema in Havana. The experience in the cinema becomes the seed from which all those aspects and themes develop which Hernández artistically confronts in his works for the NAK. The focus of …

‘Swans without a lake’, NAK, Aachen (curated by Melanie Bono) –2007

Cine Yara: Stones and signatures of swans without a lake by Diango Hernández. Democracy can be built neither with ink nor with light. I guess there are many relations between cinemas, stones and signatures, but what follows is just one of them. In June 1991 Alicia en el pueblo de maravillas (Alicia in the country of wonders) by Daniel Diaz Torres (1990) was …

‘Made in Germany’, Kunstverein Hanover (curated by Martin Engler) –2007

Diango Hernández’s oeuvre is both political and poetical. His materials are found and secondhand antennas, telegraph poles, plastic chairs, the Internet, the political situation in his home country Cuba, or sculptural, acoustic arrangements of record players and loudspeakers. His oeuvre is doubtlessly rooted in the Cuba of the nineteen-nineties after the demise of the Soviet Union and the accompanying breakdown of the nationalized Cuban economy. …

‘XXIe Ateliers internationaux’, Frac des Pays de la Loire (curated by Laurence Gateau) –2007

Diango Hernández, Domestic Monuments by Pierre Tillet. The link between art and merchandise explored by John Miller. The microstate created in Rotterdam by the Atelier Van Lieshout. The memorial to the victims of Guantanamo by Gianni Motti. World Trade Monopoly by Öyvind Fahlström. Self-Portrait Exaggerating My Negroid Features by Adrian Piper. The re-enactment of the bloody miners’ strike against the iron policy of Margaret Thatcher …

‘Traitors’, Galeria Pepe Cobo, Madrid –2006

Traidores by Diango Hernández. Hoy soy traidor, mañana seré héroe y el día después, las piedras no alcanzarán para monumentos o para ser lanzadas sobre mi cuerpo. Quién ha sido el maestro que ha creado todo este plan? Quién me ha partido en dos? Quién a convertido el mar en lava? Traidor él, traidor su plan y sus cómplices. La muestra “Traitors-Traidores” en Galería Pepe …

‘The Unhomely: Phantom Scenes in a Global Society’ (curated by Okwui Enwezor) 2nd Seville Biennial, Seville, Spain

Diango Hernández, Inside the mouth of the panther by CT, 2007. Unlike most of the Cuban artist who have risen to international prominence in the last decades, Diango Hernández is a graduate of Havana’s Superior Institute of Design (ISDI) and not of its Institute of Art (ISA). But it is precisely his training in design that proved to be crucial in infiltrating an art …

‘Zones of Contact’, Biennial of Sydney (curted by Charles Merewether) –2006

CRIS(IS)HOME by Diango Hernández. What it was ours It’s still ours, but now the ruined F is my home. Whether an improvised wall a corner of a house or the half of a box can be associated to the appearing of “Cris(is)Home” and it’s constructed out of an old and ruined fragment of industry’s roof. This “object” shows two faces, one it’s the …

‘How to Live Together’, Sao Paolo Biennial (curated by Lisette Lagnado and Ulrike Gross) –2006

Interview with Diango Hernández by UOL. 1- Please, describe and explain your art work for São Paulo´s International Biennial

“We are unfinished drawings” Is a three dimensional drawing, It is a piece that shows the side we never manage to see in a drawing. This piece continues my research about drawings and brings to it the frustration implicit in a drawing, the drawing intended …

‘Spies’, Alexander & Bonin, NY –2006

Diango Hernández’ first exhibition in North America will open at Alexander and Bonin on April 15, 2006. Spies will be shown concurrently with Traitors at Galería Pepe Cobo in Madrid. Born in 1970 in Sancti Spiritus, Cuba, the artist has lived in Europe since 2003. The work in both exhibitions reflect his analysis of the iconography and rhetoric of the Cuban revolution and the tensions …

‘Lichtkunst aus Kunstlicht’, ZKM/Museum für Neue Kunst, Karlsruhe (curated by Gregor Jansen) –2005

Stop by Diango Hernández. Several car’s tail lights switched on laying down over the floor in a museum room, they are just pieces of a bigger system but the system is absent, they look like a ruins of a night traffic jam, they can’t move but still they can work as they used to. The red tail-lights are the warning signs in our daily life, …