Inner World (2024): A Globe for Destiny

"The damned circumstance of water everywhere…" wrote Virgilio Piñera, encapsulating in a single phrase the condition of the island, the weight of insularity, the sense of confinement imposed by geography. "Inner World" takes a common object—a didactic globe—and transforms it into a personal reflection: a cartography of memory, an emotional geography where only one shape remains, Cuba.

A globe is, by definition, an object of knowledge, a tool through which we learn about the vastness of the world. Here, however, it becomes a boundary. There are no continents, no political borders, no coordinates. Only the island, an inescapable presence. It is a powerful metaphor for how one's place of origin can dominate the perception of the world, how a single reference can overshadow all others.

This kind of transformation—turning functional objects into conceptually charged pieces—has precedents in contemporary art. Works like "La Piel del Mundo" (The Skin of the World) by Ernesto Oroza, where a map is stripped down and turned into an eroded surface, or Mona Hatoum's pieces, which manipulate globes and cartographies to explore displacement and uprootedness. It also recalls Marcel Broodthaers' "Atlas," where the map ceases to be an informative tool and becomes an image of uncertainty and alienation.

"Inner World" plays with the paradox that, for some, a map is a promise of possibilities, while for others, it is a reminder of limits. Here, the island is not just a point on the map—it is the entire map. A reflection of how imagination can merge identity and memory into an object, transforming something universal into something profoundly intimate.