Cirenaica Moreira

Cuban photographer's Cirenaica Moreira's photographs have been described as "vagina dentata," and she's one of my favorite photographers in the world (Disclaimer: As a Moreira superfan, dealer and collector, if Moreira's photos climb in price I stand to make a huge fortune).

The below video by Nicaraguan poet Yolanda Blanco appropriates Moreira's photos to make Blanco's poetry sing.

If Cuba ever regains its freedom, and its talented artists are then able to travel the world, then expect talented artists like Moreira to be discovered by a whole new set of American curators and collectors, and to truly blosom out.

Cirenaica Moreira was born in Havana, Cuba in 1969 and graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana with a focus in the performing arts, which is strongly reflected in her tableau-like photographs, with the artist herself playing the lead role. She is considered by many to be one of the most influential Cuban photographers of her generation. Her work has been displayed in many galleries, museums, art fairs (ARCO, Art Basel, etc.) and biennials around the US, Latin America and Europe.

Art critic and writer Armando Suárez-Cobián has written that:

"Cirenaica is not only the physical protagonist of her work but also the metaphor for those she dreams. Cirenaica has constructed a being that transcends her, she has converted her body into a place where all the women she is, gather together to knit and conspire. That duality has become destiny. The created characters have profiled her femininity in a way that fluctuates between the quiet knitter spinning thread who dreams and waits, and, at the same time, is being dreamed of and is exposed. And dreamed of in her delirium, she is diluted in the grace of the water. She is revealed in the silent violence of the light that burns and darkens when it falls directly, and is converted into sharpened metal that united with the dreamed bodies, cuts when they are caressed."

Buy Cirenaica Moreira now.