Afro-Cuban culture has shaped Cuba’s music, religion, visual language, and artistic identity for centuries. Now, the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami is celebrating that legacy with the largest survey of Afro-Cuban art ever staged. Two exhibitions bring together more than 100 works by 58 artists, tracing 200 years of creativity and exploring the many ways African heritage has shaped Cuban art.
The centerpiece, El Pasado Mío/My Own Past: Afrodescendant Contributions to Cuban Art, brings together more than 80 works by 44 artists of African descent. The exhibition spans 200 years, from 1822 to 2022, and includes paintings, sculpture, photography, video, mixed media, and works on paper.
For this presentation, guest curator Alejandro de la Fuente drew on Miami collections to double the number of historical works created before 1959. The exhibition brings familiar names such as Wifredo Lam, Agustín Cárdenas, and Manuel Mendive into conversation with artists whose contributions have received far less attention, including Pastor Argudín, María Ariza, and Tony Ximénez.
The exhibition also shows works by 11 women artists who have long been excluded from the traditional Cuban art canon. Shown together for the first time, these artists help expand the story of Cuban art beyond the artists and movements most often celebrated by museums and historians.
“El Pasado Mío/My Own Past restores critical omissions in the annals of Cuban art history by elevating Afrodescendant artists who have been overlooked, forgotten, or written out of the historical record,” Dr. Jill Deupi, the Lowe Art Museum’s Beaux Arts Executive Director and Chief Curator, states. “The Lowe is honored to present this transformational exhibition, which not only contextualizes these lost voices but also brings them into dialogue with contemporary artists and artists from the Cuban Vanguardia.”
Every artist in El Pasado Mío/My Own Past is Afrodescendant. Together, their work reveals a rich and expansive history of Cuban art while presenting a different lineage than the one traditionally offered by museums and art historians.
“This shows a different genealogy for Cuban art,” says de la Fuente. “We are rescuing Afrodescendant figures who were sidelined by history and presenting them with some of the most well-known Cuban artists who are also of African descent.”
A companion exhibition, Afrocubanismo: Highlights from the Ramón and Nercys Cernuda Collection, examines how artists outside the Afro-Cuban community represented its culture and traditions. The exhibition features 27 works by 14 artists connected to Afrocubanismo, a cultural movement that brought together visual art, literature, and music in Cuba during the 1930s and 1940s.
Presented in conversation with El Pasado Mío/My Own Past, the exhibition offers a contrasting perspective on Afro-Cuban culture. “Theirs is an external gaze—they were looking into the Afro-Cuban culture without really understanding it,” says de la Fuente.
At the same time, Afrocubanismo played an important role in shifting perceptions of Cuba’s African roots. “Collectively these artists achieved something remarkable—they emphasized the idea that you cannot imagine Cuba without its African roots,” de la Fuente explains. “Afrocubanismo was a transformative moment, producing some of the most beautiful pieces of visual art in Cuban art history.”
Together, the exhibitions examine who gets included in the story of Cuban art and who has been left out. By placing Afrodescendant artists at the center of the narrative, El Pasado Mío/My Own Past restores overlooked histories, while Afrocubanismo explores the complicated ways those histories were interpreted by others.
El Pasado Mío/My Own Past and Afrocubanismo are on view at the Lowe Art Museum through September 12.
The Lowe Art Museum is presenting the largest survey of Afro-Cuban art ever staged, pairing two exhibitions that bring more than 100 works by 58 artists into conversation.
Elio Rodríguez Valdés, Jungla Carnal (Naked Jungle), 2020, Soft sculpture and acrylic, 59 x 59 x 7 ¾ in
Ramos Blanco, Head of Langston Hugues, Bronze
Juan Carlos Alom, Serie Nacimiento de una tierra (Birth of a Land Series), 2010, Inkjet print from photo negative, 19 1/2 x 19 1/2 inches
El Pasado Mío/My Own Past brings together more than 80 works by 44 Afrodescendant Cuban artists, restoring voices long sidelined from the historical record.
Oscar García Rivera, Comparsa (Carnival Dance), ca 1940, oil on canvas, 40 x 58 inches
Pastor Argudín Pedroso, Flamboyán, carreta y bohío (Ponciana Tree, Cart and Hut), 1939, Oil on cardboard laid down on canvas, 18 3/4 x 15 inches
Antonio Argudin, Chon Mambises
Luis Martínez Pedro, Mujer en Interior con Pájaro y Florero (Woman in Interior with Bird and Flower Vase), 1949, mixed media on heavy paper laid down on canvas, 29 1/2 x 41 1/4 inches
Eleven women artists, long excluded from the Cuban canon, appear together for the first time in the exhibition’s expanded Miami presentation.
Harmonia Rosales, Dinis Dias: Land of the Negros, 2022, Oil on Belgian linen and wood panel, 36 x 72 inches
Maria Magdalena, Campos Pons, Finding Balance, 2015, 28 polaroid prints, 116 x 161 in.
Wifredo Lam, Mujer con Pelo Largo (Woman with Long Hair), 1938, mixed media on heavy paper laid down on canvas, 39 x 25 inches
Domingo Ravenet, El Jagüey (The Banyan
Tree), 1938, oil on wood, 30 x 24 inches
Afrocubanismo examines how Cuban artists racialized as white people engaged with, and often appropriated, Afro-Cuban culture during the 1930s and ‘40s.
Mario Carreño, Pastoral (Pastoral), 1946, oil on canvas, 29 3/4 x 35 3/4 inches
Rafael Queneditt y Morales, Osh ún, 1969, Wood and repoussé and chased copper, 18 inches
Alberto Peña, Cuba en Marcha (Cuba on the March), 1936, Oil on burlap, 45 x 34 1/4 inches
René Portocarrero, Diablito Abacua (Little Devil Abacua), 1962, oil on canvas, 20 x 16 1/4 inches
Exhibition Information:
El Pasado Mío/My Own Past: Afrodescendant Contributions to Cuban Art
Afrocubanismo: Highlights from the Ramón and Nercys Cernuda Collection
May 1-September 12, 2026
Lowe Art Museum
1301 Stanford Drive, Coral Gables, FL 33146
Lowe Art Museum: Website | Instagram
My Modern Met granted permission to feature photos by News Travels Fast.
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