Through parody, pastiche, and simulacrum, in this series, José Ángel Toirac revisits historical documents, specifically Cuban photography from the 1960s. The iconography of the decade’s revolutionary epic, defined by the emblematic photographs of Alberto Korda and Raúl Corrales, is dismantled, and recreated by Toirac in a restaging in which the artist and his collaborators define themselves as the heroes and protagonists. The remake is a critical comment on the mechanisms of power and the fiction of the meta-narratives of history, wherein illusion, reality, and ideology are disrupted.

Toirac’s art includes paintings, videos, and installations. He graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte in 1990 and received the National Prize for Plastic Arts in 2018; his work has exerted a notable influence on younger generations of Cuban artists.