“Retropía,” a solo exhibition by Cuban artist Dagoberto Rodríguez, remains on view at the MADMi [Museo de Arte y Diseño—Miramar] through January 2024. Curated by Diana Cuellar Ledesma, the exhibition centers on his Emblemas series, in which Rodríguez combines the aesthetics and paraphernalia of classic American cars with the linguistic exploration of Cuban politics and popular culture. MADMi is located at 607 Calle Cuevillas, Miramar, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Description (by Diana Cuellar Ledesma, Curator): This exhibition revolves around the Emblemas series, in which artist Dagoberto Rodríguez combines the aesthetics and paraphernalia of classic American cars with the linguistic exploration of Cuban politics and popular culture. In the logos of old Ford, Chevrolet or Pontiac models, the brand names have been replaced by words or expressions typical of revolutionary rhetoric, political dissidence or, simply, expressions of popular culture.
An eloquent symbol of the strength of the United States after the Second World War, classic American automobiles were disappearing from the streets of the world with the gradual renewal of fashions, styles and technologies. Paradoxically, in Cuba they have remained in full use throughout sixty years of communism, becoming part of the island’s tourist repertoire.
It is estimated that during the 1940s and 1950s, four out of every five automobiles produced in the world were made in the United States, where domestic sales were sufficient to maintain the long economic chains involved in their manufacture, to the extent of impose urban planning models and the ways of life that emanate from them.
Faced with a Europe devastated by war, the United States was the immediate reference point on which Latin American countries oriented their modernizing projects, generally with poor results. The Retropía exhibition by Dagoberto Rodríguez does not seek to feed nostalgia or the cult of the automobile, but, on the contrary, to reflect on the prevailing urgency of rethinking our cities and the ways of inhabiting them. This need is imposed on a planetary scale, but especially in the Latin American subcontinent where, postponed, stopped or incomplete, modernity remains at the base of the psyche and life as a hereditary utopia or permanent dystopia.
The title of the exhibition is based on the concept of retrotopia, a term coined by Zygmunt Bauman to refer to the current historical situation, in which the future is so threatening and uncertain that mental escape is directed towards the past. Nostalgic exaltation, however, is giving rise to a dangerous resurgence of nationalist mythologies, worship of agitating leaders and critical identity claims. Along these lines, Retropía by Dagoberto Rodríguez also seeks to warn about the risk of the seduction of consumerism, fashions and ideological extremisms.
[MADMi is open Tuesdays-Saturdays, 10:00am-5:00pm. ENTRANCE DONATION: $5 ADULTS / $3 STUDENTS.]
For more information, see https://www.madmi.org/exhibiciones/futuras/retropia
“Retropía,” a solo exhibition by Cuban artist Dagoberto Rodríguez, remains on view at the MADMi [Museo de Arte y Diseño—Miramar] through January 2024. Curated by Diana Cuellar Ledesma, the exhibition centers on his Emblemas series, in which Rodríguez combines the aesthetics and paraphernalia of classic American cars with the linguistic exploration of Cuban politics and
