Nestor Siré

Nuevitas, Cuba

April, 2022

Sponsored by Clydette and Charles de Groot in partnership with O, Miami

ARTIST STATEMENT

I contemplate the practice of art within given contexts and its capacity for the interpretation of social and cultural phenomena. It is a form of action that can actively influence the processes it intervenes. My artistic methodology is to confront bureaucracies and extend social structures to determine more effective ways in which art can participate in the complex relationship between official and informal networks.

My interest focuses on unofficial methods for circulating information and goods, such as alternative forms of economic production, and phenomena resulting from social creativity and recycling, piracy, as well as a-legal activities benefitting from loopholes. More specifically, the idiosyncrasies of digital culture in the Cuban context; which has seen alternative forms of networking emerge in a country that has been completely disconnected from the Internet until recently. When I look into these actions, I pay particular attention to those dynamics deeply related to identity, memory, and cultural/historical amnesia.

In my work, intentionally engage with the phenomenon that I had researched. The artwork is presented as new media installation that includes diagrams, video, photographs, public interventions andobjects. Based on the principles of relational aesthetics, the resulting project intervenes within the social context and the participants involved. My process of collaboration is rooted in the search for agents in different theoretical fields with which I could share common interests. That way, every phase could be negotiated and the final result extends beyond the art context. 

BIO

I was born in 1988. I lives and works between Havana and Camagüey, Cuba. Graduate from Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts Education (B.A.E) in 2006. 

 My works have been exhibited at the National Museum of Fine Arts (Havana), the Queens Museum (New York City), Rhizome (New York City), the New Museum (New York City), Hong- Gah Museum (Taipei), UNAM Museum of Contemporary Art (México City), and Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Fe (Argentina), among other venues. I also presented work at the Gwangju Biennale (South Korea, 2018), Curitiba Biennial (Brazil, 2017), the Havana Biennial (Cuba, 2015) and the Asunción International Biennale (Paraguay, 2016) and has taken part in the Festival of New Latin American Cinema (Cuba), the Oberhausen International Festival of Short Film (Oberhausen, Germany). 

 In 2019, I received the National Curated Awards of Group Exhibitions in Cuba, in 2016 the Visa for Creation prize from l’Institut Français, Media Arts Assistance Grant, New York State Council on the Arts and has been awarded residencies including Dos Mares (Marseille, France), the Ludwig Foundation, and LASA (Havana). 

I also have an academic-pedagogical profile within my artistic practice and I have presented workshops and lectures at a variety of institutions including The Royal Academy of Fine Arts (The Hague), ArtEZ University of Arts (The Netherlands), Open Documentary Lab and Program in Art, Cultural and Technology, MIT (Massachusetts), School of Art, Design and Creative Industries, Wichita State University (Kansas), Presentation at PLAS, Princeton University (Princeton), Lectures at the Williams Collage Museum of Art (Williams), New York University, Digital Communications and Media, Department of Technology (New York). 

ARTIST LINKS

Website: www.nestorsire.com

Instagram: @nestorsire