“I have always been interested in the relationships between text, language and culture. It seems to me that the way we speak determines the specific form that the world acquires. As Castaneda said, the world is the way it is because we talk among ourselves about it being that way. On the other hand, the way we organize our texts about anything supposes a hidden structure that organizes the world in a certain way. A part of my work has been dedicated to criticizing the structure of Cartesian, Western language—that which is only capable of dealing with isolated things and not with the relations between them. The idea is to imagine, through art, other language structures and how other worlds are drawn from those models.” - Ernesto Leal
Ernesto Leal (born 1971), a Cuban multidisciplinary artist based in Havana, emerged from the 1980s Arte Calle collective with interventionist performances disrupting contemporary norms, evolving into explorations of language's social and political dimensions through painting, drawing, installations, performance, photography, and video that fragment, subvert, and recontextualize text and speech to critique power, utopia, identity, and cultural belonging. Graduating from San Alejandro Academy, his works probe arbitrariness in discourse, memory's gaps, and societal apathy, featured in biennials like Istanbul, Havana, and Documenta, with exhibitions at LACMA, MAM Mexico, and MEIAC Badajoz. His practice, blending sarcasm with philosophical depth, positions him as a key voice in Latin American conceptual art, with pieces in collections including the Jorge Pérez Collection.