Among Cuba’s foremost conceptual artists, Capote has cultivated a multimedia practice in which poignant, material metaphors convey the vicissitudes of human and psychic experience. Raised in the western province of Pinar del Río, he studied at the Instituto Superior de Arte under René Francisco from 1996 to 2001. Since his acclaimed collaboration with the collective DUPP at the Seventh Havana Biennial (2000), Capote has exhibited widely and represented his country in the Venice Biennale’s first Cuban pavilion (2011). His work encompasses sculpture, installation, and performance, often repurposing familiar and found materials—as in Casados—with political and psychological irony.
In Casados, Capote reflects on the nature of marriage, figured here in two pairs of life-sized brown leather shoes, a man’s wingtip and a woman’s sandal. The two right shoes are conjoined by an extended length of brown leather; the left shoes stand apart. An absurdist allegory of marriage, Casados simultaneously binds and separates the pairs: they can neither escape the other nor consummate their relationship, remaining instead in a state of eternal limbo. Casados II, a variation that features two pairs of men’s shoes, is part of the Daros Latinamerica Collection.
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park