Reynier Leyva Novo (1983, Cuba)

Working across media, Novo combines anthropological research with cutting-edge technology to examine the global psychological and sociological effects of complex political issues. The booth will feature Novo’s ongoing series, Mnemosyne’s Whisper, which debuted earlier this year at the artist’s solo exhibition Former Present Today at The Blaffer Art Museum of the University of Houston.

Mnemosyne’s Whisper is comprised of acrylic paintings and drawings on canvas restaging the removal of Confederate monuments in the United States following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. The title references the Greek goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, and underscores the central role that memory plays throughout Novo’s practice. First, Novo draws a monument removal taken from a media photograph. After meticulously selecting a single pixel from the same sky as the media image, he replicates its hue in the process of painting. He then conceals the drawing under multiple layers of the chosen color. Through the sequential application of layer upon layer, the image vanishes, completely obscured by blue acrylic paint. Each canvas is then photographed with infrared light, revealing the concealed drawing hidden by the paint. The infrared imaging technique provides a layered view of the entire composition in a single recovered image which he prints, so that each work is a diptych of a monochrome canvas and a printed image.

Novo’s work has been presented at the Liverpool Biennial 2010, United Kingdom; La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy (2011, 2017); Biennial de la Habana, Havana, Cuba and the Aichi Triennale, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Aichi, Japan (2019), among others. Novo’s work is included in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY; Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO), Farber Collection, New York, NY; Fundación María Cristina Masaveu Peterson, Asturias, Spain; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), TX; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), FL; Pizzuti Collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN.