The Secret Garden of Nórido and Vila

I’ve always felt that Guanabacoa has a particular spirituality, a certain angel that defies time, so even though it’s necessary to cross the city, Pepe Antonio's neiborhood seems the perfect space to host a photographic exhibition where contemporary men appear naked and adorned, with the aesthetics of bygone eras.

In the words of the creators themselves, Yuris Nórido and Lester Vila: «The series approaches the male nude from a visual perspective that refers to the prevailing graphic aesthetics in the last decades of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th. Based on the painting of the French Gustave Moreau, it has a clear influence from the symbolist movement in the visual arts and also from modernist and postmodernist poetry in literature, especially the work of Rubén Darío and the Cuban Julián del Casal, a figure who inspired and to whom it’s dedicated this series; Regino Botti; Jose Manuel Poveda; Dulce Maria Loynaz».

The 14 digitally worked photographs that make up the exhibition "Secret Garden" (Reveries of a modernist) are born entirely from elements portrayed by the authors in different places in Cuba:

«Like a collage, everything is brought together to create an evocative sheet in a concept of beauty in which only art is enough. The naked bodies of contemporary men are dressed only with decorative elements from bygone eras that are scattered in buildings, tableware, altarpieces, cemeteries and museums throughout our country.

The task of composing them as they are seen today in Corral Falso Gallery took place during the days of the pandemic: «At that critical moment for humanity, this space of mental, personal, always mystical escape appeared, in which the references and visions of the authors meet”, also explains a text written by the artists themselves.

And precisely Nórido and Vila come from the letters, from the very title it’s evident the calling of telling one or many stories, which is not surprising to those of us who know their training and talents as journalists. They have gone from word to image without haste and with rigor, with the same respect and professionalism in each language, with an enchanting virtuosity.

"The garden" by Nórido y Vila is no longer so secret, some of us have been visiting it through its pages on social networks, and now it has been left wide open through the recently inaugurated exhibition, which will remain for a whole month. Amid the Cuban spring, Guanabacoa, blooming with art, invites you to discover the mysteries of a garden made with bits of the past and lights from the present.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff