Manuel Piña
Past Artist In Residence
2000

Born in 1958 in Havana, Cuba, the photographer Manuel Piña is known for his gelatin silver prints of photographs taken in his home country. In 1998, he held a famous exhibit at the Marvelli Gallery in New York titled “(De)constructions and Utopias.”  In this exhibit, Piña developed the black and white photographs from negatives shot by Eduardo Muñoz. These images of the Microbrigadas building project call up issues of how history is constructed, the failed Cuban Revolution and visions of utopia. Piña holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from the Vladimir Polytechnic Institute, Vladimir, Russia. Piña began as a practicing artist in 1990 after working for several years in the engineering field. Since that time he has participated in a number of individual and group exhibitions in Cuba and around the world. Piña is interested in the ways in which visual culture, particularly photography, has historically advanced political agendas. The now almost instantaneous global transmission and dissemination of images, whether photographic, digital or video-based, can be used as instruments of power or historical revisionism. Piña’s current work engages in this dialogue of visual culture and politics.