Current Exhibition
Naya A. Mauricio: "Museum of Unborn Memories"
September 25, 2025 – October 29, 2025
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 25, 2025 from 5:30 p.m. – 7 p.m.
Artist Talk: Thursday, September 25, 2025 at 5 p.m. in Cultural Arts Building Room 2033
“Museum of Unborn Memories” is an exhibition of new paintings by visiting international artist, Naya A. Mauricio, opening in the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Cultural Arts Building (CAB) Art Gallery on September 25, 2025. The exhibition will run through Wednesday, October 29, 2025.
A public reception will be held on Thursday, September 25, 2025 from 5:30 p.m. – 7 p.m., with an artist talk before the reception at 5 p.m. in UNCW's Cultural Arts Building, Room 2033.
Naya A. Mauricio is Cuban artist living in Ecuador. On view will be his new work, close to 70 small format oil paintings on paper.
For more information visit https://linktr.ee/cabartgallery
Artist Statement
“Our memories are imprecise and changing; they depend on our recall and reinterpretation. All human beings carry out the creative work of reconstructing what we believe to be our invariable memories. We are, to a greater or lesser extent, authors of our memories. We use the raw material of the small, imprecise notes our brain takes at every moment of our lives, and we reconstruct scenes with the help of our own memories of other events, our collective memories, or the memories left to us by the experience of contemplating various forms of art (film, literature, music, visual arts, performing arts). In this, we are no different from a fiction writer.
In the "Museum of Unborn Memories" exhibition, I propose to reconstruct this fragmentary process of recreating memories. That is why the word "unborn" is used in the title, because it is precisely the process, not the final image, that is portrayed in the works. This process resembles the syncretism with which all cultures are constructed. A transculturation process where borders disappear and identity is not something fixed but rather is shaped at every moment. The decision to paint isolated elements, without a background, attempts to recreate the experience we have when visiting an archaeological museum, where we encounter mysterious fragments of a largely unknown past. The exhibition should be perceived as a large installation where each element is a mysterious fragment of a past that never existed.
Of course, there are autobiographical elements in this exhibition. For example, the experience of being born in the Caribbean, of having lived most of my life as an immigrant, of having lost almost my entire family, among others. But those memories have been reworked until they become something that no longer belongs to me.
Speaking about my work in a more general way: almost unconsciously, all my life I have been building a personal bestiary in which the human being plays a predominant role.”
Biography
Born in Havana, Cuba, 1975.
Graduated from Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas San Alejandro, Cuba, 1994.