Equipajes Personales (Personal Luggage)—
Candelario

Candelario, a multidisciplinary artist based in Cuba, is the founder and co-director of LASA, Laboratorio Artístico San Agustin – with Aureilie Sampeur as project curator located in the outskirts of Havana where he collaborates with community members through his socially engaged art practice. LASA was created in response to the need “for contemporary artistic practices in the public space” and functions as an experimental framework for “cultural confrontations” in a peripheral area of Havana.

Through May and June, Candelario will work at Dimensions Variable, equally situated in the margins of thriving downtown Miami, where he will adopt LASA’s experimental methodology. The main thrust of the project will aim to bridge Miami and San Agustin around issues of community and their connection to architecture, urbanism and sense of place. These engages will take visual and sound form in the construction of a hybrid building complex that combines elements from the architectural specificity of San Agustin and the artist’s experience in Miami. The artist will conduct interviews with Cubans in Miami who have a personal connection to San Agustin. The result of these exchanges will be archived in suitcases that become personal luggage.

The on-going and processed based aspect of Candelario’s artistic practice will be empathasized through a series of talks, encounters and panel discussions with the community about social practice more broadly and the continuities and challenges of creating socially-engaged work in two distinctly different socio-political contexts: San Agustin (specifically) and Miami (the United States). Candelario will spend two months in Miami as part of a residency at The Fountainhead. Dimensions Variable will be transformed into the artist’s laboratory. Stay tuned for more information about related public programs.