May 31, 2009–January 24, 2010
Mbua Ndoki (Sorcerer Dog), 2004/2009, mixed-media installation; Ojala se Hundan los Cielos (I Wish The Skies Would Fall), 2005, acrylic on canvas, 72 x 98 in.; Courtesy of the artist.
Born just days after Fidel Castro’s 1959 overthrow of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista,
José Bedia’s life would be rooted in the complex political landscape of the Cuban Revolution. Although Cubans loved their home country, life became defined by struggle and oppression, and the idea of escape to a better life became a de facto part of the national consciousness. Bedia was thirty-six before he left Cuba. An artist’s grant took him and his family to Mexico City. By then his art was being censored in Cuba, and he knew things would only get worse; he decided never to return. The family later settled in Miami, just 90 miles from Havana but, at the same time, a different world. Bedia’s large-scale paintings and installations explore the African roots of Cuban and Caribbean culture and the idea of the quasi-exile—the nomad who must rebuild home in a new land.
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