The presence for the first time of the work of Roberto Diago (Havana, 1971) in Berlin reveals to the public of that European capital the strength of a visual discourse that from the most adventurous contemporaneity alludes to an essential way of being Cuban.
Opened at the prestigious Crone gallery this December and on display until the end of next January, the exhibition Looking for the ashes brings together works of notable impact, in which pictorial conventions are reinforced through the incorporation of metallic and textile elements.
The first reactions of the Berlin public and specialists point towards the understanding of a plastic language that speaks of the construction of a cultural identity and an ethnic and historical legacy that cannot be reduced to formulas.
Against the simplifying Eurocentric gaze that tends to see the Caribbean as an exotic territory in its miscegenation and folklore, the work of Juan Roberto Diago Durruthy presents the complexity of a cultural process that began in a traumatic way when the colonial powers enslaved hundreds of thousands of Africans to exploit them in the lands of the then called New World.
