Wilfredo Prieto

Wilfredo Prieto (born 1978; Sancti Spíritus, Cuba), is a Cuban conceptual artist. He is best known for using absurdist and subversive humor to explore contemporary politics and the current sociopolitical state of the world.

He moved to Havana to pursue his art studies at The University of Arts of Cuba (ISA), graduating in 2002.

Overview He has a university diploma as a painter but has not painted for the last 10 years. He admires the conceptualist Marcel Duchamp but seeks to distance himself from traditional approaches to art and to work independently of specific historical or cultural frameworks. Havana serves as a point of reference in his work.

His medium keeps changing, it depends on the particular idea or the concept he is working on and he never gets attached to any way of working. Most of the time, the missing elements in Prieto's work are obvious.

In fact, in 2001, he did his most widely known work “Apolítico” with 30 flagpoles stripped of their familiar colours. This show has been shown in Ireland, Italy and France. In 2004, the more than 5,000 books that comprised his Biblioteca Blanca were utterly blank (White Library). This show went to the biennial exhibitions in Singapore and Venice, and will travel next to Austria. For the 2006 Havana Biennial, he contributed a rotting banana peel, a bar of soap and a daub of axle grease, which he placed in a neat little pile on a floor of the exhibition space. He tampers with the ordinary until it becomes unlikely but not entirely impossible. In 2006, he also transformed a Canadian art museum into a dance club, with disco lights, dance-floor, and everything except the music (Mute). In 2007, in a Barcelona gallery he once laid a rug in the middle of the floor, then carefully combed the gallery space for all the little bits of dirt and dust he could find, which he then swept under the rug (Untitled/Red Carpet).

One of his most recent works is called "Walking the dog and eating shit", which was a number of public exhibitions he did in Lennon Park in Havana.

Prieto recently won the 2008 Cartier Award, which entitles him to a three-month residency in London. He plans to use the time there to install a project he calls Estanque (Pond), which consist in covering the top of 100 oil barrels with a layer of water and serving as a makeshift habitat for a living frog.

Prizes and grants

2013 Beca de Artes Plásticas Fundación Botín, Santander 2011 Seleccionado para el Premio Internacional de Arte Diputació de Castelló 2010 Seleccionado para Future Generation Art Prize 2010, Kiev, Ucrania 2008 The Cartier Foundation Award, con residencia en Gasworks, Londres. Premio F, Buenos Aires Beca de Creación Norte 08, Zaragoza 2007 Residencia en Le Grand Café, St Nazaire, Francia 2006 Residencia John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Nueva York 2005 Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, residencia 2001 Segundo Premio, Salón Provincial Oscar F. M., Sancti-Spíritus 2000 Premio a la mejor curaduría 2000, Galería Habana, DUPP, La Habana. The 2000 UNESCO Prize for the Promotion of the Arts, VII Bienal de la Habana, DUPP, La Habana 1997 Asociación Hermanos Saíz, Sancti-Spíritus, beca Nubes Verdes

Collections

Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), Ontario, Canadá CA2M, Comunidad de Madrid, Madrid, España Centre Pompidou, París, Francia CIFO, Miami, Estados Unidos Colección Adrastus, Mexico D.F., México Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC), Nueva York, Estados Unidos Col·lecció Cal Cego, Barcelona, España Collection Museum of Old and New, Tasmania, Australia Coppel Collection, Mexico D.F., México Daros Latinamerica Collection, Zúrich, Suiza Fonds régional d'art contemporain corse (FRAC Corse), Francia Fundación/Colección Jumex, México D.F., México Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Nueva York MUDAM Collection, Luxembourg Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, La Habana Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart, Tasmania Peter Norton Family Collection, California S.M.A.K., Gante, Bélgica Verbund Collection, Viena

Articles and reviews

Lazo, Direlia. Wilfredo Prieto en la mira. Art OnCuba No. 03, julio-septiembre, 2014, pp. 70–75 Wilfredo Prieto (Entrevista). Elephant. The Art and Visual Culture Magazine, número 19, verano 2014, pp. 154–155. Lazo, Direlia. Wilfredo Prieto. Hangar Bicocca, ArtNexus, No. 89, 2013, pp. 94–95 Mosquera, Gerardo. A one liner philosopher, Art in America, septiembre 2012 Alessi, Chiara. Wilfredo Prie Balancing the curve, Art-Domus, Milán, agosto 2012 Bardier, Laura. Wilfredo Prieto and the Work of Art as a Direct Gesture, Literature and Arts of the Americas, Issue 82, Vol. 44, No.1, 2011, pp. 143–148 Guerrero, Inti. A question of choosing, Metropolis, Oct-Nov, 2011, pp. 47–53 Hernández, Erena. Ser y nada, Atlántica Revista de Arte y Pensamiento, Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, #48/49, pp. 228–235 Dalila López Arbolay, Parachute 125: La Havana, Les intuitions illogiques de Wilfredo Prieto, enero-marzo 2007 Anaïd Demir, Jardin des Tuileries, Journal des Arts, 28 de octubre de 2006 Barriendos, Joaquín, La ciudad latinoamericana como reflexión estética, Lars, Nº5, 2006 Barriendos, Joaquín, The IX Biennial of Havana, FlashArt, Nº248, mayo-junio 2006 Castillo, Hector Antón, Wilfredo Prieto, ArtNexus, Nº58 Vol.4, p. 130, 2005 Oliver, Conxita, El qüestionament de la cultura, AVUI, Nº9837, 10 de febrero, 2005 Peran, Marti, Wilfredo Prieto, Exit Express, Nº9, febrero, 2005 Porcel, Violant, Los libros deshabitados, LaVanguardia, Culturas, 26 de enero, 2005 Molina, Ángela, Biblioteques i camins que es bifurquen, El País, 20 de enero, 2005 Sueza, Paula, Curator, enero/marzo, 2005 D.Abreu, Andrés, Mucha abstracción, Diario Gramma, Año 8/Nº158, 6 de junio, 2004 Rattemayer, Christian, 8 Bienal de Habana, Artforum, vol.XLII, n°6, febrero 2004 Salgado, Gabriela, 8th Havana Biennial : The Bittersweet Taste of Utopia, FlashArt, Enero-Febrero, 2004, p. 47 Papararo, Jenifer y Demkiw, Jains, Two perspectives on two collaborations, C Magazine, Winter, 2004 Rodríguez Enríquez, Hilda Maria, Palo porque boga y palo porque no boga. Giros en la octava bienal, Artecubano, Dossier p. 16, Nº1, 2004 Herzberg, Julia, ArtNexus, Nº52, 2004, p. 86 Benítez Dueñas, Issa, extracto de ARCO 2004, ArtNexus, Nº53, p. 98 Marx, Gary, Havana, Chicago Tribune, 20 de noviembre, 2003 Gopnik, Blake, In Havana, an Air of Possibility, The Washington Post, 16 de noviembre de 2003 D.Abreu, Andrés, Tras lo fiel a su mensaje, Diario Gramma, Año 7/Nº307, 3 de noviembre, 2003 León Arévalo, Glenda, Intervenciones y performáticas epocales y abstraídas, Artecubano, Dossier p. 8, Nº2/3, 2003 Mosquera, Gerardo, Del arte latinoamericano al arte desde América Latina, Art Nexus Nº48, abril, 2003, p. 70 Antón Castillo, Héctor, El sediento sueña que bebe, La Jiribilla, abril 2003 Noceda, José Manuel, Un texto infinito, AtlAntica, Nº37, p. 10