Layeres Lives:
A Liquid History of Cuban Art
Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, Florida.
2026
Through different media, especially photography and printmaking, the artists in the exhibition weave together personal experiences and collective histories. Beneath their formal and material explorations lie rich associations that address the realities, and at times contradictions of womanhood. Architectural structures, domestic objects, portraits, and landscapes emerge as sites of projection where desire, memory, and resilience are inscribed into forms that assert interdependence and connection.
One such thread of connectivity among these Cuban artists is the continual encounter between land and sea, a tension that shapes memory and belonging. In the exhibition, the sea does not appear as a border defining insularity, but a conceptual framework through which individuality and community are intertwined. These seascapes act as mirrors of reflection whereby the tides evoke cycles of labor and care; the depths of the water preserve submerged histories; and its horizons suggest lives lived across distances both real and imagined.