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[ INTERIORS ]
The Havana home of Cuban artist Damian Aquiles is,
he explains to Lydia Bell, a work in progress
Living rooms
Photography by Mark Luscombe-Whyte

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This page
Living room of Damian Aquiles’
house with Czechoslovakian
chandelier, 19th century bronze
statue, Murano ashtrays
from the 1940s and 1950s
and mid-century furniture
Previous page
Turn of the century wooden
statue of Santa Barbara.
Garden with artwork from the
series Infinite Time, Infinite Colour,
Infinite Memory and Infinite Destiny
(2006), made from found metal

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he home and studio of Cuban artist Damian
Aquiles reflects the enchanting disintegration
of Havana itself. Although unprepossessing and
tumbledown from the outside – unadorned aside
from a dangling, metal-hewn globular sculpture
gracing a side terrace – inside it is a stage set
of ruined beauty that always appears part-way
to being renovated from a state of dilapidation.
With double-height ceilings and a plain
cross-formation corridor off which rooms cascade
symmetrically, the house is as perpetual a work in
progress as the works in it. Art and house interact
symbiotically, the walls left, in the main, untouched,
and brushed with water to reveal layers of old paint.
Aquiles ushers me into one of his sitting rooms,
which functions as a living art gallery. Small metal
cut-outs of human figures appearing to be marching
are mounted in formation. They are fashioned from
metal taken from refrigerators, water tanks and
other Cuban white elephants.
They are part of the series Infinite Time, Infinite
Colour, Infinite Memory and Infinite Destiny which
has been exhibited in New York, San Francisco, New
Orleans, Cuba, Canada and Spain. Aquiles describes
them as ‘one of the leitmotifs of my career’.
Making art from found objects is de rigueur
in Cuba. Discarded, recycled materials are
everywhere. Raw art materials, in this country still
stymied by poverty and the US embargo, are not.
‘My work is deeply connected with the search
for an object or material that may seem at first
glance to not have any importance,’ Aquiles says.
‘When discovered I transform its context and
meaning. I work with these materials, painting,
pasting and sewing, adding to them, giving them
a new history and a new life.’
‘I live in a country where time is viewed very
differently from the rest of the world,’ he continues.
‘Some say it feels like time has stopped in Cuba, but
by the same token, time has eroded and aged many
of the materials I work with. Their history and
texture attract my attention.’
Thus, while Aquiles does not consider himself
part of any particular group, has not been adopted
by the Cuban establishment and is markedly less
political than many artists of his generation who
graduated in the 1980s and 1990s, he is definitively
of his context. But if there is a political message it
is artfully generalised: ‘This [Infinite Time] is a piece
with multiple interpretations. But the main focus
of it is the theme of “protest”; and the “marching”
shows not all of us go in the same direction. Not all
of us are a part of an idea. There is always a figure
walking in the opposite direction of the others.’
On the opposite wall is a piece from the series
Building My Silence, for which metal from paint
cans has been stretched and nailed to wooden
frames and assembled to form a mosaic or pattern.
American cars, Russian cars and other discarded »

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01
03
02
04

6. Painting: Industria leal (2006)
acrylic and pastel on found canvas;
1950s Lucite lamp
01
Terrace of house with artwork
from the series Infinite Time,
Infinite Colour, Infinite Memory
and Infinite Destiny
02
Damian Aquiles
03
Corridor of house with
Untitled, mixed medium
04
Artwork from the series Infinite
Time, Infinite Colour, Infinite
Memory and Infinite Destiny;
mid-century furniture and modern
Sputnik lamp from Palm Springs

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[ INTERIORS ]
metal objects combine to create these sculptures
that ‘weave together Cuban stories’, he says.
Cubans are open about their artistic influences,
and Aquiles is no different. He is a self-professed
disciple of artists who’ve developed careers with
found material such as Rauschenberg, Tàpies and
Kiefer. ‘Understanding these artists in particular
and their work processes have helped me to create
and inform my own development,’ he says.
This house – to which his studio is adjoined
at the back – was built in 1905 by one of Havana’s
myriad American residents. The daughter of
the owner – a Mr Cooping – married a Cuban but
died childless in the 1960s. The maid of the house,
Vicenta, inherited the house. It was Vicenta who
was living here when Aquiles’ American wife
(curator Pamela Ruiz who has brought artists
including Louise Bourgeois and Robert
Mapplethorpe to Cuba) first spied the house in
1999 when scouting for locations for a production
company. Unusually, Vicenza was the sole owner:
since the revolution, most substantial houses have
been occupied by multiple families, summarily
portioned off and impossible to buy, mostly in
a state of near-ruin.
When Aquiles and Ruiz finally acquired the
house six years ago it was also a wreck, with 19th
century cables wrapped in fragile cloth tangled
together throughout. ‘When it was raining, it rained
inside,’ says Aquiles. ‘When it stopped, it carried on
inside for the next three days.’ They slept in a tent.
The paucity of galleries in Havana is well
documented. The prevalence of artists in Havana
is vastly out of proportion with the number of state
galleries, and private galleries are outlawed, so
artists form relationships with galleries outside the
island or sell direct to visiting collectors, like Aquiles
does. Which is how the house turned into an
informal exhibition space during the 2000
Havana Biennale. Aquiles and Ruiz launched an
exhibition here, This Is Your House Vicenta, which
helped to expose artists including Angel Delgado
and Ernesto Leal, and brought in American
artists including John D. Morton and Kerstin
Zurbrigg. While it lay outside the official
programme of the Biennale, it was rammed: the
couple say that they are uneasy about doing that
again for reasons of privacy, but that they are
developing a Cuban residency programme to
expose other artists who’ve been unable to break
into the establishment.
‘The house helped my work, because I have
been able to show it here without the need of
a gallery. This house is not a white box; it is a living
room, a dining room, with art. That gives the
collector a chance to see how the art looks in
display.’ While Aquiles is not associated with
a gallery and describes his CV as ‘unimpressive’,
his collectors include Ben Rodriguez Cubeñas,
Beth Rudin DeWoody (‘one of my earliest
supporters and now a close friend’), Thomas Dicker,
Cindy Miscikowski, Jerry Gorovoy, Robert Wilson,
Rita Schrager and Paula Traboulsi. Many works
are bought first hand by collectors who pass through
his home on a word-of-mouth referral.
The other trajectory of Aquiles’ work is abstract
paintings, for which he takes inspiration from De
Kooning, Twombly and Howard Hodgkin. For these
he heaps paint, layer upon layer, and often
incorporates a graphic element. Most are painted
over multiple previous incarnations. ‘The painting
process for me begins with the moment I open
a can of paint,’ Aquiles says. ‘I paint over and over,
creating layers, which changes the colours and their
intensity. I use a lot of colour, which I am not afraid
of. Spontaneity is a big part of my process. Days pass
by and I lose the perspective of time. I forget to eat.’
Aquiles’ whimsical mentality is accepted as
usual in the cultural context of Cuba, where
artists are revered. Moreover, the peculiarity of
the dysfunctional economic context means art
is as viable a career option as neuroscience and,
quite possibly, better paid.
Many artists, trapped on the island, find
themselves unable to be inspired without it
when they finally break loose. Cuba remains
a source of unique dreaming. While Aquiles prefers
to see himself as ‘an artist, not a Cuban artist’,
even though he finds the summers ‘painfully
hot’, he, too, chooses to remain in the heartland.
‘I have created many of my works outside
of Cuba, and I do I believe that art has no
nationality, but I find a special source of inspiration
on Cuban soil. Also, some of the materials that
I use are either easier for me to find in Cuba or have
a very different meaning when they are found here.
This is a creative place in all respects. As my wife
says, the very act of living in Havana is an art.’ ◆
Below
Bathroom of house with
19th century shipping
trunk and 1930s lamp
Opposite
Kitchen of the house