Rocío García: The Object of Power is Power

Over five decades of painting, Rocío García (b. 1955, Santa Clara, Cuba; lives Havana) has developed a distinctive visual language that draws from a diverse set of literary, artistic, and other cultural influences—from film noir and comics to Henri Matisse, Franz Kafka, and Havana nightlife—to explore shifting power dynamics in scenes both absurdist and (homo)erotic. The figures she renders in The Object of Power is Power exist at the margins of society and the imagination, caught within existential, seemingly irresolvable situations that darkly mirror systems of authority. Within them, her work creates spaces for humor and the imagined collapse of entrenched power structures. The work of guest curator and award-winning Cuban-American author Carmen Maria Machado is deeply resonant in its use of body horror, speculative fiction, and queer-feminist narrative: she brings an incisive and intuitive reading of García’s work to the exhibition.

García's numerous solo exhibitions include Noemí Espace Brownstone, Paris (2026); NG Art Gallery, Panama City (2025); Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, 14th Havana Biennial, Havana (2024); Frederic Snitzer Gallery, Miami (2024); El Apartamento Gallery, Havana (2023); and Thomas Nickles Project, New York (2021). She has been a distinguished artist in residence at RU and the Cuban Art Foundation in New York, at the Vermont Studio Center, at Fundación Ludwig de Cuba in Basel, Switzerland, and at the University of Michigan, and has been awarded the Distinction for National Culture award by the Cuban Ministry of Culture. García graduated from the San Alejandro School of Fine Arts in 1975 and received her MFA at the Repin Academy of Fine Arts in Leningrad, Soviet Union, in 1983. She lives and works in Havana.