Rafa
2022
Rafael Triana is a multidisciplinary artist. His work combines per formance, video art, installation and digital illustration. He was born in 1988 in the province of Ciego de Avila, Cuba. After his postgraduate studies at the School of Fine Arts of Havana (ISA) where he obtained the Gold Diploma in Set Design, he settled in
Paris in 2015.
PARALLEL is a series of digital illustrations that respond to current human relations issues. This series addresses the difference, opposites and social inequalities, and seeks a link to connect to contemporary
times.
I use different techniques such as collage, traditional drawing, charcoal and digital art. Digital art allowed me to combine all my techniques into one, developing brushes, textures, atmospheres, now from a computer.
My illustrations have always been an ironic and poetic reflection of real life. I appropriate conventions and common situations to create a new reality. I imagine a life on pause, like a photograph before the click, like a
Theatre scene where we are all extras waiting to play the main role. I see my art as a defence mechanism against reality, to combat the circumstances of life.
It is very di cult to grow in a world populated by bonsai trees.
I'm looking for the art that lives in commonplaces. My creative process is inspired by universal history, myths and everyday life. I am interested in the lifespan that man creates and what he gives to what already exists. I transform the life of things by manipulating their material, their utility and their context. I invent a story in the immediate future and I establish connections between the material and the immaterial, between the natural and the artificial.
My works are re-appropriations of conventions, images, common objects, of which I manipulate the material, the function and the utility. I am looking for the modernity that lives in the old or vice versa. Any inanimate product created by man becomes for me a living body, having a function, an aesthetic and a date of expiry. The works are a mirror for the modern man and by his actions, he becomes himself an object of consumption. I see art as a parallel natural element, as a living form. My ideas always come from a daily action that I amplify, expose and heal as a unique experience
