This work, made early in Luis Manuel Otero’s career, belongs to a set of sculptural pieces installed in various exhibitions on view in 2011 and 2012 that marked his initial foray in the Cuban institutional art world. In a period of formal experimentation with three-dimensional artworks, the adoption of a precarious aesthetic of povera flair, involving improvisation and recycling, reveals Otero’s early interest in gesture and performative action to approach social themes. Inspired by the stories of a former soldier of the war in Angola, the work recreates one of the many anonymous characters from an imaginary obliterated by the official discourse. The issue of postwar stress is addressed through the life stories of veterans involved in the conflict after their reintegration into the island’s everyday life. The work reflects on the exhaustion caused by speeches anchored in unfulfilled promises, while the country’s heroes are segregated and abandoned to their fate in the precarious reality of the country.

Self-taught, Otero moves from drawing and sculpture to performance, net art, relational art, and public space intervention, mobilizing the nation’s historical memory and political imaginary of the country. With a record of arrests, harassment, and other practices of state violence––including several hunger strikes and a recent sentence of five years in prison due to his opposition to the dictatorship––Otero has blurred the boundaries among protest art, criticism, and space for dissent on the island.