déjà vu:  Sandra Ramos’s solo show. Curated by. Alejandro Machado.

Sandra Ramos Lorenzo (b. 1969, Havana) graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in the early 1990’s. This is a generation of artists who were acutely aware of the creative movement of the 80’s in Cuba, and the events that surrounded them, a spiral sequence that culminated in abandonment, in emptiness. I agree, in essence, with the idea that art may be divided into two camps; “structuralist” and one that “sees art in daily life”.

Decidedly, we recognize that Cuban art from the first half of the 1990’s falls into this second camp, a time in which reality was shocking, almost surreal, bringing to the table all of the fodder necessary to feed the artists creative process. Sandra inherited the anthropological passion in the most emblematic artistic processes of the 80’s.

Rummaging into the past is a way to reflect upon the present. Sandra Ramos Lorenzo illustrates not only that history always repeats itself, reinforcing, once again, that there is no greater predictor of future behavior than past behavior, but also that human nature is the same everywhere. Sandra uses the examples of Cuban artist Eduardo Abela, and German-American Thomas Nast, to demonstrate this.

Sandra now lives in the United States, having moved to Miami around four years ago. At first glimpse, this seems like a reckless move, as her work always focused on the human condition and reality of Cuba. Her everyday reality completely changed, and the very context of her work as well. However, as I already said, the human nature is the same everywhere, and this, in essence, is what art is truly about. To observe the evolution of the work of Sandra in the past few years has been a great lesson for me, and a reaffirmation of the existence of universal codes, always the same, that represent the drama of humanity, demonstrating that “a national art” does not exist.