Marco A. Castillo

Born in 1971 in Camaguey, Cuba. Lives and works in Mérida, México.

Marco A. Castillo is founder of the disbanded art collective Los Carpinteros, and his work is imbued with an interest in Cuba’s history and the country’s post-revolutionary, social and cultural changes.

Castillo’s oeuvre is one of the most influential in Latin America in the last over twenty years. Drawing extensively from architecture, design and sculpture histories and often expressed in a humorous manner, Castillo creates installations, drawings and sculptures that relate to space and negotiate between function and lack of function.

With his work, Castillo reflects on the modernisation of Cuba in the 1960s and 1970s, researching and referencing influential Cuban artists, architects and designers of a generation that he refers to as a “forgotten generation”.

The sculptures and works on paper from his most recent project combine elements of modern design and Soviet-period socialist realism with traditional Cuban techniques and materials, including mahogany wood and rattan fabric. From a political standpoint, Castillo seeks to follow the historical trail of these designers, interior designers and architects, in a quest to claim Cuba’s artistic heritage.

Recently, Castillo has presented his research on Cuban design utopia of the early years of the Revolution and a critique of government oppression in exhibitions at the Cranbrook Museum, Detroit, and in projects such as ‘La Casa del Decorador: la revolución de la vida diaria’ in a modernist house in Colonia Roma Sur, Mexico City.

Marco A. Castillo is represented in important national and international collections, such as Tate Modern, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; National Museum of Fine Arts, Havanna; Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Thyssen–Bornemisza Contemporary Art, Vienna; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Daros Foundation, Zürich; Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, among others.