Opus

José Toirac is a multidisciplinary artist living in Havana, whose work explores themes of history and memory. In particular, it references images produced by the media, the press and history textbooks. ‘My working method consists of recycling all these images and reusing them in ready-made, parodic, citational forms,’ the artist explains. Opus is a video project that borrows figures and statistics used by Fidel Castro in the speech he gave to inaugurate the 2003-2004 school year: this series of numbers, pronounced by Castro, moves across the screen without any apparent logic, their source and meaning never revealed. The abstract aspect of statistics is shown here in all its dehumanised absurdity, like a political void.