New York/Feeling Positive: The Cuban Box Project is presented on Governors Island as part of the New York Latin American Art Triennial, in an exhibition promoted by NYLAAT that is committed to amplifying Latin American voices in the contemporary circuit. The project, co-curated by Juan Carlos Alom and Geandy Pavón, takes as its starting point the tradition of the Cuban minute camera to rethink portraiture as a living, performative and deeply human experience.
The exhibition brings together works by Ángel Daniel García Marinello, David Berenguer, Eva Alexandra Martínez, Lili(ana), Maikel Plasencia González, Ramón Williams and Rodrigo Abd, who, from various visual and material strategies, address issues such as Cuban identity, perception and sociopolitical stories. The ensemble is articulated as a layered reflection on memory, representation, and the conditions that shape contemporary cultural discourse.
At the center of the project is a handcrafted large-format camera—the “Cuban Box”—that functions at the same time as a camera and a darkroom. Through this device, artists recover the slow gesture of analog photography, transforming each portrait into an act shared between photographer and sitter. The image stops being instantaneous and becomes a process, a presence, an experience.
The exhibition also unfolds as a collective project that transcends New York, by bringing together minute photographers from different parts of the world, connecting local traditions in a common language. This global dimension reinforces the idea of photography as a living social practice, in constant dialogue with its context.
