Kcho

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Kcho, July 2005
Kcho in front of his Las Playas Infinitas factory , July 2005

Alexis Leyva Machado , known as Kcho (born February 12, 1970 in Nueva Gerona , Isla de Pinos , Cuba ), is an artist and lives in Havana .

biography

Kcho graduated from the Escuela Elemental de Arte de Nueva Gerona between 1983 and 1986 and continued his studies between 1986 and 1990 at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas in Havana. Since then, his work has been recognized and exhibited internationally.

The artist Kcho is one of the most important artists in Cuba and has played a major role in the international attention that young Cuban art has enjoyed since the 1990s.

plant

He became known for large installations in which he rearranged cultural assets and everyday objects and used them to create multi-layered portraits of his homeland. He particularly likes to use boat hulls, sails and ship models that refer to the geographical and political island existence of Cuba. His work revolves around the means of transport by which the short sea route between Cuba and the United States or from the United States to Cuba can be overcome: with a tower made of half-rotten boats ( Para olvidar el miedo ), for example, the artist won the 1995 Prize of the Kwangju Biennale, and La Regata (1994), a boat shape made up of all sorts of boat-like elements, has already been seen in various museums around the world.

He did not abandon the topic in later works either, for example, for the Havana Biennale in 2000, he erected a wobbly landing stage with his installation Para olvidar and surrounded it with a sea of ​​empty transfusion and liquor bottles. In doing so, he reminds the viewer of familiar reports about Cubans who found death in the sea while attempting to secretly reach the coast of the United States in self-made water companions. In doing so, Kcho also reflects the mostly unrealizable longings of the Cubans in exile to return to their homeland. One of his most extraordinary installations was the show Casa 5 - Las Playas Infinitas , which was held in 2005 on around 400 square meters in the Kunsthalle Attersee .

Political activity

Since 2003, Kcho has been a member of the Cuban parliament, the Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular , which meets twice a year . He is known for his unconditional admiration for Fidel Castro . In February 2012 he said in a gathering of Cuban artists and intellectuals: “Everything we are grows out of the work of Fidel Castro.” In July 2012, during a debate on the new tax system in the Cuban parliament, he described it as a duty of the Cuban parliament Artists, “to work for the people for free and voluntarily without receiving any kind of public funding.” In January 2014, Castro took part in the opening of Kcho's cultural center in Havana, which is due to the extreme rarity of public appearances Castro since his illness-related retreat attracted international attention from politics.

Web links

literature

  • Alfred Weidinger: KCHO - Casa 5 - Las Playas Infinitas . Edition Anteros, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-85340-017-5 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Conocido pintor llama a los artistas cubanos a trabajar de manera gratuita . In: Café Fuerte from July 25, 2012 (Spanish)
  2. ^ A sign of life from Fidel Castro, in: RP Online January 10, 2014, accessed on March 17, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Kcho
ALTERNATIVE NAMES KCHO; Leyva Machado, Alexis (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cuban artist
DATE OF BIRTH February 12, 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH Nueva Gerona , Isla de Pinos , Cuba