Conga Irreversible, 2012

Los Carpinteros - Havana / Madrid, Cuba

Video Installation

Conga Irreversible perfectly illustrates Los Carpinteros strategy as artists, using irony to replace direct criticism. The artists work with Yosvany Terry, a Cuban jazz artist, to create a new kind of comparsa, a traditional work by a conga band with dancers seen on city streets during Carnival. For Irreversible Conga, 100 professional Cuban dancers in outlandish black outfits are choreographed doing the conga in reverse. They move constantly backwards in formation, to Terry's newly composed conga, which is played in reverse. These combined elements are a symbolic criticism to Cuba's socio-political reality.

The Havana-based collective Los Carpinteros (The Carpenters) has created some of the most important work to emerge from Cuba in the past decade. The group merges architecture, design, and sculpture in unexpected and often humorous ways. They create installations and drawings which negotiate the space between the functional and the nonfunctional. Los Carpinteros' work is collected by mayor museums in the United States, Europe and Latinoamerica, including the Museum of Modern Art, NYC; and the Guggenheim Museum, NYC.

Learn More

www.loscarpinteros.net/

118

Fort York National Historic Site

100 Garrison Road

This project is outdoors.