Hamlet Lavastida (b. 1983 in Havana, Cuba, lives and works in Havana) creates installations made of posters, prints, collages, photos, and video clips compiled into comprehensive archives. He primarily uses texts, images, and symbols, as well as political speeches and ideological terminologies, from the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, the period in which socialism became increasingly institutionalized in his native Cuba. By reappropriating and reinterpreting this material from an artistic perspective, Lavastida seeks to question the political developments of that era.

This publication showcases Lavastida’s most recent installation at Künstlerhaus Bethanien. Through his personal confrontation with those cultural archives, which are not recognized as such in Cuban society, Lavastida creates a kind of register and calls for a critical examination of Cuba’s history. In particular, he condemns the failure to raise awareness about and address the scars of the past in today’s Cuba.