{"id":261040,"date":"2026-05-06T19:47:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T19:47:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/261040\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T19:47:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T19:47:19","slug":"a-circle-of-cuban-art-at-westchester-regional-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/261040\/","title":{"rendered":"A circle of Cuban art at Westchester Regional Library"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest exhibition at the Westchester Regional Library brings together more than 80 contemporary Cuban artists, each working within a shared constraint: a 21-inch circular format that reveals a wide range of approaches, styles and generations.<\/p>\n

Organized in collaboration with the Miami-Dade Public Library System, the exhibition, which opened on April 3 and continues through June 25, unfolds as a traveling, evolving project that resists a single narrative. Rather than grouping artists around a theme, curator Miguel Rodez invited each participant to work within the circular format while maintaining their own visual language.<\/p>\n

The result is a wide-ranging presentation that reflects the diversity of Cuban artistic production across generations and geographies.<\/p>\n

\"Curator Curator Miguel Rodez with works from \u201cCircular Reflections,\u201d a project he developed over nearly a decade to document the breadth of contemporary Cuban art. (Photo by Oscar Fuentes, courtesy of Miguel Rodez) <\/p>\n

Rodez, a Miami-based artist and independent curator, began developing the exhibition nearly a decade ago. Over time, the initiative expanded beyond its initial scope, evolving into what he describes as both a traveling show and an ongoing record of Cuban visual culture.<\/p>\n

\u201c \u2018Circular Reflections\u2019 is a growing, traveling, large-scale contemporary art exhibition and living documentation of Cuban visual creativity,\u201d Rodez said.<\/p>\n

The defining gesture of the exhibition, the circle, operates as both formal constraint and conceptual device.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe project shuns the traditional rectangle format, which boxes in a narrative, in favor of a round portal that transports the audience wherever the artist\u2019s imagination leads,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For artists accustomed to rectangular composition, that shift required adjustment and opened new ways of organizing space.<\/p>\n

Ismael G\u00f3mez Peralta, a Cuban-born artist based in Miami whose work often explores architecture and memory, says the circular format posed an initial challenge but ultimately aligned with his existing practice.<\/p>\n

\"Ismael Ismael G\u00f3mez Peralta at his studio, where he builds layered compositions rooted in memory, architecture and lived experience. (Photo by Miguel Rodez) <\/p>\n

\u201cNormally we all work in a rectangular format. It\u2019s the traditional structure,\u201d he said. \u201cHere, the challenge was to rethink that space without losing what I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather than adopting a radial or mandala-like composition, G\u00f3mez Peralta maintained the architectural logic that defines his work, grounded in structure, weight and spatial tension.<\/p>\n

\u201cI kept my sense of gravity, my structures in space,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to lose that.\u201d<\/p>\n

His process begins with an abstract foundation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI start by releasing paint across the entire surface, building a kind of base,\u201d he said. \u201cI familiarize myself with the space. I \u2018heal\u2019 it, in a way.\u201d<\/p>\n

From there, the composition emerges through a balance of intuition and memory.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t rely on cold reasoning,\u201d he said. \u201cI let instinct guide me, what I\u2019m feeling at that moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The imagery in his piece draws from two long-standing bodies of work: his series on the ruins of Havana and another focusing on cathedral-like structures, developed after the death of his mother.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted those two elements to come together,\u201d he said. \u201cThe ruin and the cathedral, destruction and something more elevated.\u201d<\/p>\n

That duality reflects a broader meditation shaped by distance from Cuba, where he lived through the economic crisis of the 1990s before relocating to the United States in 2002.<\/p>\n

\u201cLiving outside Cuba gives you perspective,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re inside, you\u2019re too close, almost like a victim of the situation. From a distance, you can process memory differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Work Work by Ismael G\u00f3mez Peralta featured in \u201cCircular Reflections,\u201d combining architectural structures and emotional memory into a composition that reflects both loss and resilience. (Photo by Miguel Rodez) <\/p>\n

His work often holds that tension: decay and endurance, loss and continuity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is beauty in Cuba,\u201d he said. \u201cEven within destruction, there is hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

While G\u00f3mez Peralta approached the format as a structural problem, painter Luisa Mesa, a Miami-based artist known for her intuitive abstract compositions, encountered it differently.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve worked in circles for years. I love them,\u201d Mesa said. \u201cSo for me, nothing really changed. It was a natural space to work in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her process begins not with an image but with color.<\/p>\n

\u201cI start with the background. I build the surface first,\u201d she said. \u201cThen I draw into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

From there, the work develops organically.<\/p>\n

\"Luisa Luisa Mesa at work in her studio, where her compositions develop through an intuitive process guided by color and form. (Photo courtesy of the artist) <\/p>\n

\u201cI work very intuitively,\u201d she said. \u201cI always say the piece knows what it wants. If I don\u2019t interfere too much, it guides me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mesa\u2019s compositions often evoke biological or cosmic systems, forms that suggest cells, constellations or microscopic activity, though she resists assigning fixed meaning.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never decide in advance what I want to communicate,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople bring their own interpretation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over time, she has observed how viewers project their own experiences onto the work.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople with a scientific background often see something under a microscope,\u201d she said. \u201cOthers see something cosmic or even playful.\u201d<\/p>\n

That openness is intentional.<\/p>\n

\u201cA work of art is a mirror,\u201d she said. \u201cEach person sees something different in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The absence of a prescribed theme across the exhibition reinforces that multiplicity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a strong believer in freedom of expression,\u201d Rodez said. \u201cThis show is about what\u2019s in the soul of the artists.\u201d<\/p>\n

By allowing participants to work without conceptual restriction, he aimed to foreground the breadth of Cuban artistic production, from the figurative to the abstract, from the intimate to the monumental.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe objective is to challenge preconceived notions of what Cuban art is,\u201d he said. \u201cIt cannot be easily categorized.\u201d<\/p>\n

That diversity becomes especially visible within the shared constraint of the circle, where each artist negotiates the same boundary in distinct ways.<\/p>\n

The exhibition includes work by more than 80 artists across generations, among them Ram\u00f3n Alejandro, Alejandro Arrechea, Pablo Cano, Ana Albertina Delgado, Ivonne Ferrer, Baruj Salinas and Violeta Roque de Arana, among many others.<\/p>\n

Installed within the Westchester Regional Library, a Brutalist structure defined by raw concrete and geometric weight, the exhibition also shifts the context in which the work is encountered.<\/p>\n

\"Part Part of \u201cCircular Reflections,\u201d this work by Luisa Mesa unfolds through layered surfaces and organic forms that invite open interpretation shaped by the viewer\u2019s own perspective. (Photo by Miguel Rodez) <\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to bring art to people where they don\u2019t necessarily expect it,\u201d Rodez said.<\/p>\n

Rather than a traditional museum setting, the library offers a more open environment, where viewers may come across the work outside the conventions of gallery behavior.<\/p>\n

The exhibition is accompanied by a series of short texts written by Rodez in response to each piece, reflections that range from brief lines to more narrative passages.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea is not to impose meaning,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s to get the viewer thinking, to start a dialogue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, \u201cCircular Reflections\u201d does not attempt to define Cuban art through a single lens. Instead, it presents a field of individual practices shaped by different histories, geographies and sensibilities.<\/p>\n

For G\u00f3mez Peralta, that openness reflects the way art itself functions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are honest in what you do,\u201d he said, \u201cthere will always be someone who connects with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don\u2019t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The latest exhibition at the Westchester Regional Library brings together more than 80 contemporary Cuban artists, each working…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[225,227,226],"class_list":["post-261040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}