In this video, Marco Castillo, one part of the duo Los Carpinteros (Spanish for “the Carpenters”), discusses how everyday life in Havana informs their artwork.

The Havana-based collective Los Carpinteros (Marco Castillo and Dagoberto Rodriguez) transform domestic objects and common urban structures into grand, fantastical images. Inventive, humorous, and at times disconcerting, their surreal, distinctive imagery often springs from the creative repurposing of objects common in Cuban daily life. A selection of the duo’s watercolors and large-scale sculpture was featured in a solo exhibition at the Tang Museum as part of the Museum’s Opener series, which presents important bodies of work by contemporary artists through exhibitions and accompanying catalogues.

Producer/Camera/Editor: Vickie Riley. Interview: Ian Berry. Artwork: courtesy of Los Carpinteros. Footage of historical Cuba courtesy of Internet Archive, Creative Commons license, some rights reserved.

©The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, 2010