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¿Es la piedra del terror, La piedra filosofal?

Works

Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Carlos Garaicoa, ¿Es la piedra del terror, La piedra filosofal?, 1996-2001

Carlos Garaicoa Cuba, b. 1967

¿Es la piedra del terror, La piedra filosofal?, 1996-2001
Chromogenic print on Duraflex paper, face-mounted to non-glare acrylic with black acrylic backing
39 3/8 x 47 1/4 inches
100 x 120 cm
Edition 2 of 3
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Visualisation

On a Wall
Carlos Garaicoa's '¿Es la piedra del terror, La piedra filosofal?' interrogates the failed alchemy of revolutionary export through a chromogenic Duraflex print taken in Angola, capturing the stark ruins of...
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Carlos Garaicoa's "¿Es la piedra del terror, La piedra filosofal?" interrogates the failed alchemy of revolutionary export through a chromogenic Duraflex print taken in Angola, capturing the stark ruins of a concrete structure built during Cuba’s military and ideological intervention in the Angolan Civil War. The image juxtaposes the mythical philosopher’s stone—symbol of utopian transmutation from base matter to gold—with the “stone of terror” embodied in these war-scarred remnants, probing whether the violence, sacrifice, and disillusionment of exported socialism can ever yield philosophical redemption or whether they remain forever as inert monuments to ambition and collapse. By fixing the halted architecture in its precise state of decay, the work asserts that these foreign-built edifices function as spectral testaments to the unbridgeable gap between ideological projection and material reality, extending to broader meditations on transnational memory where terror and the dream of renewal remain locked in perpetual tension.

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Exhibitions

“The Future of America” (collective exhibition), Pan American Art Projects, Miami, Florida, United States, September 28 – November 9, 2024

Literature

“Carlos Garaicoa: Photography as Intervention,” La Fábrica, Madrid, 2013 : page 147

Provenance

Carlos Garaicoa Estudio Cuba > Robert Borlenghi Private Collection
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