Diango Hernández | „Bañistas“ (Bathers)

Diango Hernández: Bañistas
June 25 June–May 25, 2023
Café Tender Buttons

“Heimat means belonging—and vice versa,” confesses Diango Hernández who was born 1970 in Sancti Spíritus, Cuba, and lives since the early 2000s in Germany. His sculptural and painterly work continues to be shaped by his past and upbringing, as well as by the revolutionary culture in communist Cuba. The Cuban tradition of murals, which reflect national, socio-critical, and historical issues remains one of the artist’s paramount sources of inspiration.

Diango Hernandez’ site-specific project, developed for the Kestner Gesellschaft is a tribute to both the artist’s personal biography and the memory of his birthplace, as well as the reflection upon the original function of a current building of the Kestner Gesellschaft, which remains in the collective memory as a site of leisure, a swimming pool, build and established in 1906, and operating as such till the late 80s. Bañistas consists of a large mural, which depicts the gesture of the wave of water, reflecting the interdependence of the Atlantic Ocean, Havana and Hernández’s artistic imagery. Three metal sculptures, composed of the artist’s signature style of curved, wave-like shapes and smoothly immersed into Hernández’ alphabet of waves, perform an almost somnambulistic theatrics of human form, turning the exhibition space into a sun-kissed beach or a well-preserved sports resort.