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 Juan Carlos Alom • Cirenaica Moreira

“Images from the Last Decade of the Millennium”
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JUAN CARLOS ALOM (b. Havana, 1964)

Educated at the Institute of International Journalism in Havana, where he studied semeiotics, and at the Fototeca de Cuba where he studied restoration and conservation of photographic materials.

He has had solo exhibits at the Throckmorton Fine Art Gallery in New York and at the Iturralde Gallery in Los Angeles, as well as at the Schneider Gallery in Chicago, at the Bronx Museum of the Arts and in several other galleries in Havana, Milan and Paris. Among the group shows in which he has participated: "Shifting Tides: Cuban Photography after the Revolution" (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2001), "From the Negative: conceptual Photography from Cuba," (Photographic Arts, Minneapolis, 2000), "Vistas Nuevas: Recent Video from Cuba" (The Kitchen, New York City, 2000) as well as exhibits in San Diego, Havana, Houston, Berlin, New York, and Denmark.

His work can be found in the public collections of many institutions, including Havana's Fototeca, IF in Milan, The Bronx Museum, Foto-Fest in Houston, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Center for Cuban Studies in New York, and the Ludwig Forum for International Art in Germany. Alom constructs photographic images equally grounded in international artistic discourses and Afro-Cuban spirituality and culture. More recently, he has turned to film making and like many Cuban artists explains his art in ways that suggest a kind of "invisible" hand or spirit moving them to a particular artistic expression.

Of his non-narrative film "Habana solo," he said, "I approached several musicians and asked each one to offer me as a gift the music that he was hearing at that precise moment, a solo. None of them asked me the reasons for my project, an answer which I could not yet envision. Later, when I was alone, I felt that the music was good for my spirit, but I still could not envision an answer. The streets of Havana seemed like tunnels to me, the sounds of the city piercing my eyes and sweeping my memory along with them. And, like the melodies of those musicians who did not need an answer before offering their souls to me, the images came into being."

Juan Carlos Alom

CIRENAICA MOREIRA (b. Havana, 1969)

Graduated from the Instituto Superior del Arte in 1992 with a major in theater. She has had solo exhibits in the most important galleries in Havana (La Casona, Casa de las Américas, Galería Habana, Galería Maria Eugenia Haya at the Fototeca and Galería Espacio Abierto) and in Austin, Texas and Cancún, Mexico. She has participated in group shows in Spain, France, Israel, Canada, Portugal and Cuba, and in the United States in Minneapolis, Denver, New York City, Antioch College and the University of Albany.

Her work can be found in the public collections of the University of Virginia, Foto-Fest in Houston, the Throckmorton Fine Art Gallery in New York, the Center for Cuban Studies in New York, Lehigh University Art Gallery in Pennsylvania, Fundación Arte Viva in Rio de Janeiro, Cuba's Fototeca and the Chelsea Gallery in Kingston.

Moreira's photographs are "stagings," attempts to capture performative moments often juxtaposing the female body (her own) with various materials, including industrialized sculptural body parts. She is part of a vital new generation of Cuban conceptual photographers and says, "I am my own discourse, my own position, and my own political party."

Cirenaica Moreira

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