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Juan Roberto Diago
Cuba, b. 1971

Juan Roberto Diago Cuba, b. 1971

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Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Juan Roberto Diago, The Chosen One (El Elegido), 2018

Juan Roberto Diago Cuba, b. 1971

The Chosen One (El Elegido), 2018
Mixed Media on Canvas
79 x 60 inches
200.7 x 152.4 cm
Series: Rostros
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Visualisation

On a Wall
Juan Roberto Diago's 'The Chosen One (El Elegido)' interrogates the fractured ontology of Afro-Cuban identity through a bifurcated anthropomorphic silhouette, bisected by a raw, cloth scar that evokes ritual scarification...
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Juan Roberto Diago's "The Chosen One (El Elegido)" interrogates the fractured ontology of Afro-Cuban identity through a bifurcated anthropomorphic silhouette, bisected by a raw, cloth scar that evokes ritual scarification or the divisive lashings of historical trauma, where the left hemisphere's obsidian void confronts the right's pallid luminescence, symbolizing the dialectical tension between erasure and visibility in post-colonial narratives of selection and subjugation. Flanked by illegible scriptural margins—reminiscent of palimpsestic archives or suppressed oral histories—and adorned with a turquoise base punctuated by pearlescent beads, the mixed-media assemblage transmutes personal election into a communal allegory, probing the alchemical burden of being "chosen" amid legacies of enslavement and spiritual resilience, where the crimson ground pulses with sacrificial undertones. This conceptual rupture extends to motifs of hybrid sovereignty, positing the figure as a sentinel of reclaimed agency, challenging the viewer to navigate the interstices of predestination and resistance in a landscape scarred by racial dichotomies.
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Exhibitions

“Juan Roberto Diago: 20 Years of Creation,” Cernuda Arte, Coral Gables, Florida, October 2019 – January 2020.


“The Art of Today,” Cernuda Arte, Coral Gables, Florida, April – September 2025.


“Selections from IMPORTANT CUBAN ARTWORKS, Volume Eighteen Part II,” Cernuda Arte, Coral Gables, Florida.

Literature

“IMPORTANT CUBAN ARTWORKS, Volume Sixteen,” Cernuda Arte, Coral Gables, Florida : page 132.


“IMPORTANT CUBAN ARTWORKS, Volume Twenty-One,” Cernuda Arte, Coral Gables, Florida, 2024 : page 159.


Provenance

Robert Diago Studio > Cernuda Arte

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