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THE
ANNEX
GALLERY
Jorge Rodríguez Diez, known across the cultural circles of Havana, Madrid, and South Florida as R10, began his series on Donald Trump on November 9, 2016, only hours after he had won his first election. In the artist’s own words, it was an unexpected turn and a stark reminder that in today’s world anything—however unlikely or unthinkable—may indeed happen. The very first piece in the series was immediately acquired by collectors from North Florida, curiously together with a portrait of Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.
Jens G. Rosenkrantz’s collection of The New Yorker covers constitutes far more than an archive of graphic design or illustration. It is, instead, a lens through which one can read a century of American visual and political culture, refracted through the pages of one of the most influential magazines of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. For Rosenkrantz, the act of collecting these images is not a passive accumulation but a curatorial gesture in itself—an insistence on the political significance of images that once circulated weekly, now reframed as testimony of their time.
By the late nineteenth century, a group of Japanese statesmen had decided they’d had all the shogunate they could reasonably endure. However beautiful the swords and scabbards, it was time to catch up and tune themselves to the rest of the world. Japan had to modernize and find other uses for the wheel...
Many of us love stories about extraterrestrials. Enjoyable, measured, tinged with mystery. For some, though, they become a feverish fixation. They comb the internet the way people once prowled libraries, hunting for hidden messages, for the codes and arcana exchanged in some shadowy dimension—guardians of the secrets.
What could I possibly say today about Wifredo Lam and the exhibition the MoMA has devoted to him? Little that hasn’t already been uttered—successfully or not—by the hundreds of critics and journalists who have read, interpreted, or merely circled around the curatorship of Christophe Cherix (David Rockefeller Director) and Beverly Adams (Estrellita Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art).
Evelyn Sosa is a young Cuban photographer who has already left a subtle yet unmistakable imprint on the artistic ecosystem of the American Midwest. In 2024, she took part in Through a Stranger’s Eyes, an exhibition presented under the FotoFocus program. Coming from the Caribbean—and, more precisely, from Miami—she introduced a transnational conversation rarely encountered in these latitudes.
A few weeks ago, I visited Snakes and Ladders, the tender and meticulously staged exhibition by Sheida Soleimani at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. What struck me most—positively, almost viscerally—was the painstaking care with which she constructed the sets that would frame the subjects of her photographs. I had the impression that she refused to leave anything to chance, and that the theatricality of her mise-en-scène granted the work a warm...
Black Recreation, Relaxation and Leisure
For those arriving from South Florida—particularly from cities like Miami—Michael Coppage’s exhibition at the Annex Gallery may resonate differently than it would for a viewer from the Midwest. This is not to suggest a hierarchy of readings, but rather to acknowledge that the lived experience of Caribbean and Latin American diasporas, especially those who have made a life in Miami, offers a particular lens through which to approach this work.
Discussing his New Book
Photographer and editor Robert A. Flischel presents What We Inherit, a visual chronicle of poverty and resilience across the American Midwest and Appalachia from 1900 to today. Through archival and contemporary images, Flischel reveals the enduring struggles and human strength that shape the region’s identity, offering a moving reflection for this talk at Annex Gallery.
Alternate Documents (1994–2024)
Willy Castellanos’ post-documentary practice emerged from the photographic record he made in Havana, Cuba, during the 1994 Rafter Crisis. Despite the scarcity of 35mm film in the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Castellanos photographed complete sequences of events that included the construction of the rafts, farewell rituals, and scenes of crowds launching into the sea. Between August and September 1994, over 35,000 Cubans embarked toward the United States on hand-built rafts in what became one of the most dramatic exoduses in contemporary history.