Yoan Capote

A sort of self-portrait using a bronze cast femur bone, the strongest bone in the body, in between two blocks of extremely heavy and light-coloured cement. The artist is present in the work through its title and the anatomic feature of the bone, a bone that we all share and that perhaps represents man’s ability to resists against whatever weight or force is against it. 

Yoan Capote was born in Pinar del Río, Cuba, in 1977. He graduated from the National School of Art in 1995 and from the Higher Institute of Art in Havana in 2001. He currently lives and works in Havana.

He has received distinctions such as the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (2006), the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award (2006) and the Vermont Study Center Fellowship (2002). During the 7th Havana Biennial (2000), he received the UNESCO Prize, together with the DUPP artists' collective. In 2011, his work was part of the group exhibition at the Cuban Pavilion of the 54th Venice Biennial and in 2018 he participated in the Gwangju Biennial.

His work focuses on the examination of behaviors and psychological states (personal or collective), from the most intangible to the most visceral. His work reflects on shared or thematic conflicts where the identity of the individual subject, sometimes ceases to be important in order to be subordinated to a more global and collective reflection. He is interested in themes such as emigration, resistance, manipulation, stress, alienation, all of which are common experiences of contemporary human beings, regardless of their differences in context. Yoan Capote has achieved a recogniseable personal stamp with his well-known paintings done with hooks, from the Island series, which illustrates some of these issues.

Amongst his most recent exhibitions are:  Landlors Color, Cranbrook Art Museum, Michigan, USA (2019); Sujeto Omitido, Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Italy (2019); How the lights get in, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art Cornell University, Ithaca, USA (2019); Baggage Claims, Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA (2019); Ola Cuba, Gare Saint Sauveur, Lille, France (2018); Cuban Art, traveling exhibition co-organized by the Mid-America Arts Alliance with the Center for Cuban Studies (NYC) (2018); Cuba mi amor, Galleria Continua, Les Moulins, France (2017); Art x Cuba, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst , Aachen, Germany (2017); Overseas, Center for Contemporary Art Halle 14, Leipzig, Germany (2017); Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago, organized by Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA and The Getty. Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA), Long Beach, CA, USA (2017); On the Horizon: Contemporary Cuban Art from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida, USA (2017); Adios Utopia: Dreams and Deceptions in Cuban Art, 1950-2015, traveling exhibition at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C. and The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota (2017); Cuba Libre, Ludwig Museum, Koblenz (2016).

His work is included in several collections, among them: Daros Latin America AG Collection, Zurich, Switzerland; National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA; Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada; Perez Art Museum, Florida, USA; Farber Collection, Miami, USA; Peabody Essex Museum, Massachusetts, USA; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, USA; Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, USA; Beelden aan Zee Museum, The Hague, Netherlands; The Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Winter Park, USA; Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, Ohio, USA; Ella Fontanels-Cisneros Collection, Miami, USA; Steven Cohen Collection, Connecticut, USA; among others.