Alexandre Arrechea (Cuba, 1970)

Alexandre Arrechea’s work comprises large-scale installations, sculptures, watercolor drawings, and videos that debate such issues as history, memory, politics, and the power relations of the urban space. Arrechea’s mode of working site-specifically makes him explore the ideological and philosophical legacy of the surrounding context to create a more engaging interaction with the audience. He is internationally renowned as one of the founding members of the Cuban collective, Los Carpinteros [The Carpenters], active between 1991 and 2003. Embarking on his solo career in the same year, Arrechea is widely recognized for Nolimits (2013), a monumental project composed of ten sculptures inspired by iconic buildings in New York City and erected along Park Avenue, and Katrina Chairs (2016), erected at the Coachella Music Festival, Palm Springs, California, USA. Last December, he created “Dreaming with Lions,” an immersive rotunda resembling an enormous forum-cum-library installed at Faena Miami Beach.

Alexandre's work of large-scale installations and sculptures, drawings and videos, work to investigate cultural resonances implicit in architecture, from design to social value, and how these impact its various readings. This approach to dissecting architectural anatomies and spaces through Arrechea’s drawings and installations explores the possibility of the multiple conflicts embedded in them as result of the many decisions inherent in their structures and in their histories.

In this manner, Arrechea's work investigates the relationship between architecture, materiality, and the Black body. In Architectural Elements #1, this theme manifests the visceral visual relationship between the bricks and a Black person, bringing forward topics of labor, slavery, and simultaneously, the concept of creating a home, of communal building, and of self-direction.