Wilfredo Prieto

Wilfredo Prieto
Wilfredo Prieto's "Untitled" (White Library), which is now situated on the second sub level of MONA in Hobart, Tasmania.
Born	1978 (age 45–46) Sancti Spíritus, Cuba

Wilfredo Prieto (born 1978; Sancti Spíritus, Cuba), is a Cuban conceptual artist.

He moved to Havana to pursue his art studies at The University of Arts of Cuba (ISA), graduating in 2002.^{[citation needed]}

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My name is René Francisco Rodríguez. Most of what I do in my life, has a lot to do with art, with the context of art, which has been changing a lot for many years; I’ve spent most of my life trying to balance art and education. Right now we’re in the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA), which is like a second home to me, as I started in ’77 and graduated in ’82 from the Escuela Nacional de Arte, then came to the ISA until ‘89, when I started to work here and, I’ve been giving classes here for about 16 or 17 years. I think the way in which I’ve always tried to give classes is to generate a kind of pedagogic thinking, remembering that when I was a student, I would always want to have teachers who understood me better than the ones that I had. So, my form of teaching has always been to try and systemise what students want a little bit. To be a teacher who gives students what they want rather than a teacher who gives out his own ideas. And, another thing I’ve tried to do is spend time out of the classroom. I’ve been doing this for a year now, trying to avoid creating a physical space in which students gain their course content directly. This gives me the opportunity, also from an artist’s perspective, to learn a lot in a Cuban context, trying to give classes, which is also a form of research for my personal work, to the extent where the time comes when I can’t separate one thing from another, I mean, teaching for me has become a way of creating art. We’re in a neighbourhood called Romerillo, which was formed maybe during the 60s, with the same labourers who came to build the school, who came from other provinces, and then later built little houses here. With a grant I received from Berlin, well, this gave me some financial backing, and I wanted to use this to help people in La Habana. And so, I went searching for the kind of people who would deserve such a wonderful gift, you know, and so I made an inquiry here and 3 people came up, 2 of which I've worked with. The first house, that is, in this neighbourhood, the first person the people chose was Rosa, a lady who passed away a year after I completed the project. Rosa was the most well-loved person in the neighbourhood and, well, once I'd started asking around, the people all mentioned Rosa, Rosa, and pretty much everyone, well, most of the people, voted for her. Rosa was a person with a very strong spirituality, who was living in an incredibly unstable situation; they had no bathroom, they had nothing… I mean, people just can’t imagine how they live in these houses. So, with Rosa’s house, our job involved transforming it completely, we removed the entire roof and rebuilt it, the entire patio, where we created a kind of Japanese garden, we rebuilt the kitchen, the bathroom, and then after a few months we started on “Nin”. My work at the Venice Bienniale, “El patio de Nin”, took place in this house. I was working here for 3 months. Part of my work is, during the first period, is the subtlety with which you enter into such privacy, and how they open up their intimate lives to you and allow you into it, and I arrived here at dawn and would feel around and film things, while they were asleep, I mean, within the heart of this family. And through questions and a little encouragement, I would pick out elements of their desire, you know, things connected with that desire which would facilitate the material production of my piece. I’m like a sound box, an instrument they take in their hands and they start to work, and through their efforts, it starts to take shape. I don't impose my subjectivity; as an artist, I'm simply a mediator, I mean, it takes a tremendous effort to understand the job of art as something closely connected to sociology. At this point, I think the artist is taken out of the concept of art but at the same time he comes back to art... ...because I'm not a doctor, nor a sociologist; I'm an artist who’s trying to make sociology, trying to make medicine or to perform some kind of curing somehow, and so this becomes great material, as you’re not only modelling a material that you’re going to exhibit, but a material that comes out of the very life of such people, of their needs, and with which you are also working for the first time. It’s not the same as an artist imagining shapes, as an artist who receives requests and has to make things based on that. This intercommunication in my work fascinates me. Here we are in my studio. This is where I usually... ...generate my ideas and my things, and where I spend part of my day. At the moment I’m preparing a painting exhibition, which I’ve been working on for about a year. They’re paintings, let's say, which each take a lot of time to do, because they require a very specific technique and they talk a bit about my visual work, of representations of the masses, of allusions to political demonstrations. It’s a piece that also speaks of collectivity, although it’s more representational, unlike my social art work, which is more related to interpersonal relations. In this case, they’re more like relations that derive from trying to pair the status of the town, of a town, with a social status, I mean, I think that it’s an area of my work that has a lot to do with my past, let’s say, with my first few years of work. I worked for many years with toothpaste, and used to recycle the empty tube; this was a kind of social work too, because pasta used to be called “masa” (mass), which can also be used as "masa de gente" (mass of people), so I think the relation comes from that, or sometimes when searching, rummaging through the origins of my work, my mother told me that when I was young and I had no white colouring, I’d paint with toothpaste. So, I think that everything in life is at some point connected, you never know where the things you have come from.

Overview

He has a university diploma as a painter but he has not painted anything for the last 10 years. He admires the conceptualist Marcel Duchamp but tries to distance himself from any traditional way of making art and also tries to stay free of any particular historical or cultural considerations that could obstruct his creativity. Havana is certainly a significant point of reference and a very important focus for him.

His medium keeps changing, it depends on the particular idea or the concept he is working on and he never gets attached to any way of working. Most of the time, the missing elements in Prieto's work are obvious.

In fact, in 2001, he did his most widely known work “Apolítico” with 30 flagpoles stripped of their familiar colours. This show has been shown in Ireland, Italy and France. In 2004, the more than 5,000 books that comprised his Biblioteca Blanca were utterly blank (White Library). This show went to the biennial exhibitions in Singapore and Venice, and will travel next to Austria. For the 2006 Havana Biennial, he contributed a rotting banana peel, a bar of soap and a daub of axle grease, which he placed in a neat little pile on a floor of the exhibition space. He tampers with the ordinary until it becomes unlikely but not entirely impossible. In 2006, he also transformed a Canadian art museum into a dance club, with disco lights, dance-floor, and everything except the music (Mute). In 2007, in a Barcelona gallery he once laid a rug in the middle of the floor, then carefully combed the gallery space for all the little bits of dirt and dust he could find, which he then swept under the rug (Untitled/Red Carpet).

One of his most recent works is called "Walking the dog and eating shit", which was a number of public exhibitions he did in Lennon Park in Havana.

Prieto recently won the 2008 Cartier Award, which entitles him to a three-month residency in London. He plans to use the time there to install a project he calls Estanque (Pond), which consist in covering the top of 100 oil barrels with a layer of water and serving as a makeshift habitat for a living frog.

Prizes and grants

2013 Beca de Artes Plásticas Fundación Botín, Santander
2011 Seleccionado para el Premio Internacional de Arte Diputació de Castelló
2010 Seleccionado para Future Generation Art Prize 2010, Kiev, Ucrania
2008 The Cartier Foundation Award, con residencia en Gasworks, Londres.

Premio F, Buenos Aires Beca de Creación Norte 08, Zaragoza

2007 Residencia en Le Grand Café, St Nazaire, Francia
2006 Residencia John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Nueva York
2005 Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, residencia
2001 Segundo Premio, Salón Provincial Oscar F. M., Sancti-Spíritus
2000 Premio a la mejor curaduría 2000, Galería Habana, DUPP, La Habana. The 2000 UNESCO

Prize for the Promotion of the Arts, VII Bienal de la Habana, DUPP, La Habana

1997 Asociación Hermanos Saíz, Sancti-Spíritus, beca Nubes Verdes

Collections

Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), Ontario, Canadá
CA2M, Comunidad de Madrid, Madrid, España
Centre Pompidou, París, Francia
CIFO, Miami, Estados Unidos
Colección Adrastus, Mexico D.F., México
Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC), Nueva York, Estados Unidos
Col·lecció Cal Cego, Barcelona, España
Collection Museum of Old and New, Tasmania, Australia
Coppel Collection, Mexico D.F., México
Daros Latinamerica Collection, Zúrich, Suiza
Fonds régional d'art contemporain corse (FRAC Corse), Francia
Fundación/Colección Jumex, México D.F., México
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Nueva York
MUDAM Collection, Luxembourg
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, La Habana
Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania
Peter Norton Family Collection, California
S.M.A.K., Gante, Bélgica
Verbund Collection, Viena

Articles and reviews

Lazo, Direlia. Wilfredo Prieto en la mira. Art OnCuba No. 03, julio-septiembre, 2014, pp. 70–75
Wilfredo Prieto (Entrevista). Elephant. The Art and Visual Culture Magazine, número 19, verano 2014, pp. 154–155.
Lazo, Direlia. Wilfredo Prieto. Hangar Bicocca, ArtNexus, No. 89, 2013, pp. 94–95
Mosquera, Gerardo. A one liner philosopher, Art in America, septiembre 2012
Alessi, Chiara. Wilfredo Prie Balancing the curve, Art-Domus, Milán, agosto 2012
Bardier, Laura. Wilfredo Prieto and the Work of Art as a Direct Gesture, Literature and Arts of the Americas, Issue 82, Vol. 44, No.1, 2011, pp. 143–148
Guerrero, Inti. A question of choosing, Metropolis, Oct-Nov, 2011, pp. 47–53
Hernández, Erena. Ser y nada, Atlántica Revista de Arte y Pensamiento, Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, #48/49, pp. 228–235
Dalila López Arbolay, Parachute 125: La Havana, Les intuitions illogiques de Wilfredo Prieto, enero-marzo 2007
Anaïd Demir, Jardin des Tuileries, Journal des Arts, 28 de octubre de 2006
Barriendos, Joaquín, La ciudad latinoamericana como reflexión estética, Lars, Nº5, 2006
Barriendos, Joaquín, The IX Biennial of Havana, FlashArt, Nº248, mayo-junio 2006
Castillo, Hector Antón, Wilfredo Prieto, ArtNexus, Nº58 Vol.4, p. 130, 2005
Oliver, Conxita, El qüestionament de la cultura, AVUI, Nº9837, 10 de febrero, 2005
Peran, Marti, Wilfredo Prieto, Exit Express, Nº9, febrero, 2005
Porcel, Violant, Los libros deshabitados, LaVanguardia, Culturas, 26 de enero, 2005
Molina, Ángela, Biblioteques i camins que es bifurquen, El País, 20 de enero, 2005
Sueza, Paula, Curator, enero/marzo, 2005
D.Abreu, Andrés, Mucha abstracción, Diario Gramma, Año 8/Nº158, 6 de junio, 2004
Rattemayer, Christian, 8 Bienal de Habana, Artforum, vol.XLII, n°6, febrero 2004
Salgado, Gabriela, 8th Havana Biennial : The Bittersweet Taste of Utopia, FlashArt, Enero-Febrero, 2004, p. 47
Papararo, Jenifer y Demkiw, Jains, Two perspectives on two collaborations, C Magazine, Winter, 2004
Rodríguez Enríquez, Hilda Maria, Palo porque boga y palo porque no boga. Giros en la octava bienal, Artecubano, Dossier p. 16, Nº1, 2004
Herzberg, Julia, ArtNexus, Nº52, 2004, p. 86
Benítez Dueñas, Issa, extracto de ARCO 2004, ArtNexus, Nº53, p. 98
Marx, Gary, Havana, Chicago Tribune, 20 de noviembre, 2003
Gopnik, Blake, In Havana, an Air of Possibility, The Washington Post, 16 de noviembre de 2003
D.Abreu, Andrés, Tras lo fiel a su mensaje, Diario Gramma, Año 7/Nº307, 3 de noviembre, 2003
León Arévalo, Glenda, Intervenciones y performáticas epocales y abstraídas, Artecubano, Dossier p. 8, Nº2/3, 2003
Mosquera, Gerardo, Del arte latinoamericano al arte desde América Latina, Art Nexus Nº48, abril, 2003, p. 70
Antón Castillo, Héctor, El sediento sueña que bebe, La Jiribilla, abril 2003
Noceda, José Manuel, Un texto infinito, AtlAntica, Nº37, p. 10

Bibliography

Wilfredo Prieto, Mousse Publishing, Milan, 2014
Antes que todo, CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Comunidad de Madrid, Móstoles, Madrid (2010)
Los Impolíticos, PANI Palazzo delle Arti Napoli Mondadori Electa, Nápoles, 2010
Marroquí, Javier. y Arlandis, David, Cosas que solo un artista puede hacer, MARCO (Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo) y MEIAC (Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo), 2010
Gabriele Schor (ed.), Held Together with water- Kunst aus der Sammlung Verbund- Viena, 2007
Olivares, Rosa (ed.), 100 Artistas Latinoamericanos, Exit Publicaciones, Madrid, 2007
Medina, Cuauhtemoc. Neither In the Slime of the Earth Nor in the Purity of Heaven, Mute, McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton, Canada, 2006
Lazo Rodríguez, Direlia. Interview with Wilfredo Prieto, Mute, MacMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton, 2006, pp. 7–9
Juncosa, Enrique, López, Sebastián y Valdés Figueroa, Eugenio, The Hours, Visual Arts of Contemporary Latin America, Irish Museum of Art, Daros-Latinamerica, Zürich, 2005
Tannenbaum, Judith y Morales, René, Island Nations: New Art From Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and the Diaspora, Rhode Island College of Design Museum, Providence, Rhode Island, 2004
Hlavajova, Maria y Mosquera, Gerardo, Cordially Invited, BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, 2004
Who if not we should at least try to imagine the future of all this?, Thinking Forward, Amsterdam, 2004
Pera, Rosa, Doble seducción, INJUVE, Madrid, 2003
Mosquera, Gerardo y Francisco, Rene, Wilfredo Prieto, Centro Cultural Español, La Habana, 2002

References

Interview of Wilfredo prieto on Havana-Cultura
Rattemayer, Christian, 8 Bienal de Habana, Artforum, vol. XLII, n°6, febrero 2004
Porcel, Violant, Los libros deshabitados, LaVanguardia, Culturas, 26 de enero, 2005
Mosquera, Gerardo. A one liner philosopher, Art in America, septiembre 2012
Díaz Guardiola, Javier. Wilfredo Prieto: <<Podría venderle el "vaso" a un euro a quien demuestre que su concepto es fallido>>, ABC, 6 de marzo, 2015
Lazo, Direlia. Wilfredo Prieto en la mira. Art OnCuba No. 03, julio-septiembre, 2014, pp. 70–75

External links

This page was last edited on 1 October 2022, at 00:39

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