b.1969
Cirenaica Moreira, born in Havana, is one of the foremost figures of contemporary Cuban photography. She explores her inner self as she integrates her personal life into her environment. Her photographs present problems of humanity but especially those of women. She creates her own private world in a variety of gender driven scenarios.
She graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte in 1992. An actress as well as an artist, Moreira frequently serves as her own model to construct and develop her characters, using theatrics to compose her nuanced work.
She chose to work with black and white photography in her early 1990s series “Eyes That Saw You Leave,” in which one of the photos is a nude portrait of herself draped in the Cuban flag. This series was created after the fall of communism when scores of Cubans left Cuba because of poverty. Another photograph from this period – when art supplies were scarce – shows Moreira wearing a bow in her hair made from bent spoons and a prosthetic baby bump made from tin soda-cracker cans.
Forced to use every-day found objects, her photograph “Paris, 13th of July, 1793 (Death of Marat)’” depicts a cast of the artist’s own leg resting on pillows as the work refers to contemporary art and the use of the body in an almost surreal way. This work was purchased for the University of Southern California’s Fisher Museum of Art.
Her work is in the collections of the Art Museum, University of Virginia; Arte Viva Foundation, Rio de Janeiro; Lehigh University Art Gallery; Throckmorton Fine Art Gallery, New York; and Center for Cuban Studies, New York.
More here.
The Women's Studio 