With several dozens of machete, Michelle MiRBAL decorated two from the outer walls of his studio. “This was my first work in this series, which still concerns me today,” says a large muscular person whose forearms adorns several tattoos to welcome Fink Kalung in Cuba.
Finca, with a studio and private housing of the Mirabal family, is located outside the Havana, on a hill over Guanabo. A beach city east of Havana, Michelle Mirabel, dear to a little boy, when he regularly spent part of his summer holidays with his family. “This is the reason why I built my place here in 2012,” says the artist with a heavy weight.
Former Freestyle champion currently weighs at least 140 kilograms. But Mirabal for a long time refused the painting: “I refused. At the age of 15, I exchanged a sports school at the San Alejandro art school, and then studied the design on ISDI, ”says Mirabal and goes to the sofa. This is to the right of the entrance to the extensive studio, where there is also double bass, Kong and drums.
He turns to emigration
Music, be it rap, jazz or son, is part of Michel Mirabala when he becomes creative in his studio, which extends by more than 400 square meters on two floors. There he has enough space for its large shape, which repeatedly plays with characteristic colors of the Cuban flag, with other materials such as barbed wire, but also in combination with identifiers or passages, as in current work.
“Exodo” is the name of a series in which MiRABAL deals with the migration of millions of people on water and land from their countries, including more and more Cubans: inside.
“Emigration is part of Cuban history, but the current dimension jeopardizes our future perspective,” says Miurabal. According to official figures, more than one million Cubans leave the island inside, especially more qualified at the age of 40 years. Mirabal addresses this, in May 2023, for example, in the Biennale of Architecture in Venice, where you can see some works from éxodo.
Emigration does not stop in his own family. The daughter lives in Miami, the other in Barcelona and only the third, still minor, with him in Guanabo. Gorky for the family man Mirabal, on which more than a dozen family members work, and who has grown in a family of artists, which provides many inspiration.
Obama called
Grandmother Marta Jean-Claude, a guard who was expelled in Cuba, was a famous folk singer, one of her three daughters-Opera singer, as well as father Richard Mirabal the musician. This creative atmosphere was formed by Michelle Mirabel, as well as his youth in Kayo Huezo, a popular but impoverished area just a few hundred meters lower than the University of Havana. Maribal loves to call himself “a black man from Kayo Hugueso, criticizes the growing racism in Cuba and more economically more difficult conditions in which the color population lives on the island.
“Exile is much less than dollars than in other areas of the population. How do such small and medium -sized enterprises arise, new prospects? ” He asks openly.
For a successful artist, whose work in the United States and Europe hangs for sale in large galleries, of course, of course, using their economic opportunities to help pizzeria in Calle San Lazaro, as well as with friends, two corners in Kayo Hugueso when launching independence. Nevertheless, its social interaction continues: well, Mirabal gathered six containers with the material of medical care and sacrificed to such hospitals as in Camagüey.
Now 50-year-old can afford it. In the latter, since Barack Obama called him in 2014 and asked him to carry out a work to resume diplomatic relations between the two countries, and he agreed, Mirabal is announced. In March 2016, his picture with a great format was his picture, when in March 2016, US President Obama and his Kubinsky colleague Raul Castro met.
Twice in improvements
He is currently working in Terminal 3 of Jose Marty Airport in Havana, and further work from him is in private collections of Donald Trump, Carlos Santana and other celebrities. Michelle MiRBALL has been one of the most influential Cuban artists in the international arena since 2016 and opened the Kubinsky colleague Kcho, whose work can be seen at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York. But unlike the pseudonym Kcho Alexis Leyva Machado, Mirabal – a largely unknown person in Cuba.
Mirabel insists on free art. I enjoy them in Cuba, and also demanded them for others, he says
“A maximum of one or two of my twelve, thirteen large series, known in Cuba. I have never had a single exhibition, it is unlikely that anyone knows that I am dealing with migration and various aspects of Cuban identity, ”Mirabal explains in a calm voice. This should change. Mirabal is currently working on a series of new exhibits, large images, as well as statues and installations, which should be exhibited in the Vedaado area in Havana in November.
Then the transportation, which is currently in the basement of the studio, can also be one of the exhibits. “Machete is a central symbol of Cuban wars for independence: this is a mambiz weapon against the Spaniards,” Mirabal explains. Mambis was the name of the Cuban fighter in independence, the main of them, the blacks, who won the Spanish colonial power in 1898. But when the US warship exploded in the port of Havana, the United States intervened, and the largest of the antiolin -buildings intervened until 1959.
The rest is a story, and Mirabal is dealing with an unreliable gift. Nevertheless, he is often called a supporter of the government in Havana, for whom his friendship, of course, contributes to some political heavyweights such as Lazaro Exesite, the former secretary of the Santiago -de Cuba party. But this is hastily, because Michelle Miurabeal, who landed in Cuban institutions to improve, twice than half, scored the freedom of art. “I like this freedom in Cuba, but I also demanded it for others,” he says.
Entrance for prisoners
Others are included by two artists with the artist and performer Luis Manuel Other Alcantara and musician Maicel Osorbo, who are currently in Cuban prisons and are included in the release of Mirabal for their release. The aspect that Michelle Mirabal, who lives in Europe for several months a year, is often overlooked.
For him, a critical study of realities on the island is an important source of inspiration. A number of his work testify to this, including the mailbox with the inscription “complaints and suggestions” that hang in his studio. Mirabal provided a Put slot with pointed teeth, which hardly allowed the letter – allegory in the stiffness of the Cuban government?
The answer to the question remains guilty of Mirabala with a wide smile. He turns to the next work, which is still waiting for the last strokes in the basement of his studio: an umbrella, which resembles the Cuban coat of arms and is opened with barbed wire. Work, which can also be part of his first solo exhibition in Cuba in November. In the end, he should contain all the artistic aspects of Michel Mirabala.