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Carlos Garaicoa
Carlos Garaicoa (b. 1967, Havana) is at the forefront of a number of contemporary artists who have taken architecture as their subject matter. Working in a range of mediums and formats—his diverse output includes photographs, three-dimensional models, pop-up books, videos, texts, and interventions—Garaicoa examines the urban environment and its embedded histories and ideologies. While his works have responded to various sites around the globe, his principal subject is his home city of Havana, with its many unfinished and crumbling buildings dating from before and, especially, after the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Among other projects, he has documented the deterioration of the city’s infrastructure through before-and-after photographic diptychs, in which he pairs an image of a standing structure with a second photograph taken after the architecture has partially or completely collapsed. Garaicoa inserts pins into the second panel and links them with colored thread to create delicate, ghostly drawings—barely perceptible depending on the viewer’s angle—of what has been lost. Works such as Untitled (“la esquina”), which records a ruined apartment block in the Cuban capital, speak to the passage of time, the impermanence of architecture, and the gap between utopian aims and reality. —Ted Mann
Carlos Garaicoa, Untitled ("la esquina"), 2003–06. Two black-and-white photographs, threads, and pins, diptych, 70 7/8 x 49 3/16 inches each image. Solomon R. Guggenehim Museum, New York. Purchased with funds contributed by Manuel de Santaren and the Photography Committee 2006.42
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