"From the beginning, my work was about breaking with sculptural tradition… scarcity of materials was not a problem, but a challenge" - Florencio Gelabert Soto
Florencio Gelabert Soto (born 1961), a Cuban sculptor and mixed-media artist based in New York City, creates conceptually charged works that probe displacement, exile, identity, and the psychic wounds of migration through thorny, fragmented, or bloodied sculptures of Cuba's map-like geography and symbolic objects assembled from wood, metal, found materials, and mixed media. Trained at San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts, the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, and earning an MFA from the University of Miami, he emerged in the 1980s Cuban art scene with pieces that transform personal and collective trauma into visceral metaphors of rupture and resilience. His installations and sculptures, often evoking treacherous landscapes of belonging, have been exhibited at the Havana Biennial, Villa Manuela Gallery, and international venues across the Americas and Europe, positioning him as a distinctive voice in the Cuban diaspora whose practice bridges formal rigor with profound socio-political introspection.