On the mattress Castro, Stalin, Pinochet and Hitler

Armando Mariño, Cuban artist. Photo courtesy of the artist.

The Cuban artist Armando Mariño waited eleven years to expose a cry against genocide: it is installing Sweet dreams, which exhibits more than a dozen mattresses expanded on the floor, painted with the face of dictators and "bad men "as Stalin, Pinochet, Fidel Castro, Hitler, Che Guevara and others.

Mariño (Santiago de Cuba, 1968) is a painter attached to the more traditional forms of painting, its best vehicle is the oil on canvas, but sometimes fail to exploit to the public with other tools. On May 22 he exhibited at the gallery of The Watermill Center, New York, this piece had thought in 2005 at an academy in the Netherlands.

"At the end, when they were to perform the 'open studios', and after having worked on several mattresses at once, could not be displayed due to lack of space. The idea I always liked, I thought it was timeless, especially now we're hearing all the time phenomena of genocide and dictators who have wiped out large portions of the population , "said Mariño.

"Sweet Dreams", where they sleep dictators painted by Armando Mariño

"Sweet Dreams", where they sleep dictators painted by Armando Mariño

Then he tried again in a biennial failed in Portugal, and could not, so the statement that "third time lucky" was fulfilled. And itensures that felt great watching the interaction that people had with the mattresses they chose in the New York gallery.

"It's interesting, because the mattresses were there for that, and people were jumping up mattresses like kids. They lay on them, they read some of the books that were around and was very curious and asked 'And who is this?' 'Why is not this and why lack the other?' and the reason why it is missing some because I was not enough time or mattresses, because the list is endless , "he added.

Contrary to what happens with his paintings and sculptures, which are in the hands of collectors and important institutions in the world, when an installation ends the strip to the trash.

Your work is eminently social, you're going to Cuba and you face a reality where people are still protesting ... that can be seen in recent paintings Protester Year (2012).

"The social unrest in the world -a Unlike Cuba, where you can not protestar-, is huge Unfortunately we know what happens in Cuba with those who protest. Disappear from public life, put them in prison, are beaten they are tortured ... that's what happened, it was a year when they were happening "revolutions" in the Middle East and here was this movement of squatters.There were given because they were totalitarian societies, where the dictator is the main figure, just as happens in Cuba. They were lucky to get these dictators to try to rewrite or invent another society, we have seen almost nothing that did not happen, but the social movement was there , "argues Mariño.