The Los Angeles-based artist’s new show is inspired by his Cold War-era childhood in Cuba, and the final entry in a trilogy of exhibitions
The past is always with us, as the artist Enrique Martínez Celaya has shown in his trilogy of exhibitions exploring and evoking his childhood in Cuba. Conceived and realised over the past decade, the first exhibition was at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, and the second at the Hispanic Society Museum and Library in New York. The final exhibition is currently on view at the Wende Museum in Culver City.
Filling the Wende’s main gallery space, The Sextant centres on a full-scale re-creation of the artist’s childhood home, a small Modernist house designed by his father. Everything has been coated with 6,500lbs of sugar, reflecting its industrial production in his hometown. A horse sculpture in front of the house pulls a sleigh piled with sugar, transported to the top of the house via a conveyor belt and crashing through the roof. In and around the building are paintings and drawings, with elements drawn from young Enrique’s letters to his father, who was able to resettle in Spain ahead of the rest of the family. (Martínez Celaya now lives in Los Angeles.)
The Sextant reflects the impact of the Cold War and Cuban history on the artist and his family. It is suffused with themes of memory, exile and the passage of time.
