“My work stems from research and archival practice… I am interested in how historical narratives are constructed and how they can be reconfigured through visual means. The image is not a fixed document, but a space in constant reinterpretation.” - José Diego Reina
José Diego Reina Utset, a Cuban painter from Havana, crafts luminous, meticulously observed oil paintings that capture the fragile poetry of transitional spaces and provisional architectures. With a sensitive yet analytical eye, he renders everyday casetas—makeshift huts, shacks, and temporary shelters—as metaphors for impermanence, entropy, and the quiet vibration of daily life under constant change. Rooted in the rhythms of contemporary Havana, his work transforms the ordinary into profound meditations on fragility, resilience, and the subtle chaos that animates existence, establishing him as a distinctive voice among Cuba’s emerging generation of artists.