Franz Caba
Bio
Franz Caba (1991, Santo Domingo) is a Dominican architect and self-taught artist. He proposes the idea of a Caribbean duality, the existence of a tangible and material Caribbean in which he lives in daily and an imaginary Caribbean that arises from the fantasies and desires of the foreign eye. His work focuses on the colonial processes of extraction and exploitation in the making of an ideal, a consumable and marketable paradise that influences the perception of those who inhabit it and of those who visit this insular space. Developing the landscape from his imagination, along with image-sourcing from the Internet, Caba engages in the reconstruction of paradisiacal postcards and spatial narratives. Using satire and absurdity to question the fantasies about the identity of the Dominican Republic and the Caribbean, Caba intervenes in these reimagined territories with objects and animals that, despite not being endemic to the Caribbean context, have positioned themselves as symbols of our identity and ways of life.
In 2020, Franz Caba was part of the 28th Eduardo León Jimenes Annual Art Contest in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dom. Rep. His solo show “Estoy aquí pero no soy yo” was presented in the Peña Defilló Museum in July of 2022 in Santo Domingo, Dom. Rep. He took part in the Caribbean Linked V residency in Oranjestad, Aruba in 2018 and in 2023 was invited to participate in the artistic residency that was part of the International Contemporary Art Biennial of Martinica, in Fort-de-France, Martinica.
Statement
My artistic practice is an exercise in which I meditate and question the absurd inside the narratives and fantasies of the Caribbean paradise through drawing, painting and installation.
Through the representation of the landscape, I materialize my findings about the relationship between space, objects and identity, pierced by the memories and fictions of my insular condition, appealing to the transgression of symbols like an act of re-appropriation, maybe vandalism.
Broaching the dynamics of belonging and everyday life, I reflect on the matters of identity product, the otherness and the imaginary that emerge from our colonial past and the emplacement of images inside the virtual realities of our contemporary Caribbean.
Additional information
ESP: Idealmente el espacio público debería contemplar a todas las identidades, pero lo cierto es que desde su diseño estos proyectan el usuario ideal del espacio.
¿Acaso se construyen igual los ambientes en el centro que en los barrios?, ¿Quienes señalan a “los intrusos”?
Me encanta el refrán que dice que cuando uno señala a alguien hay 4 dedos señalando hacia uno mismo. Siempre hay que andar con cuidado, porque el diablo nunca para en su casa.
ENG: Ideally, public spaces should contemplate every identity, but the truth is that starting from their design, these project the ideal user of the space.
Are the spaces downtown and in poor neighborhoods even built the same way? Who is in charge of pointing out “the intruders”?
I love the saying about how when you are pointing at somebody, there are four fingers pointing back at you. You always have to be careful, because the devil is never at home.
2.5 x 4m / 98.4 x 157 in
