Apolitico - Wilfredo Prieto

Apolitico - Wilfredo Prieto
This work is composed of 60 national flags on flagpoles for which Wilfredo Prieto kept the exact design but replaced their appropriate colours with a greyscale. With this simple gesture, the artist questions the difference of identities and revokes the principle of belonging and recognition by national symbols.

This piece reveals Wilfredo Prietos approach and critical position. His work often results from discreet modification of mundane objects such as plants, plastics cup or fans. These subtle interventions are so minimal that they sometimes reach a mimetic image within which the artistic gesture is almost imperceptible, albeit it generates a reflection or an inherent contradiction contained in the everyday image of the object.

The most important to me is the link and the rapprochement between art and reality. The artist is more of a discoverer, an archaeologist who reaffirms or underscores symbolic nuances that are given in actual reality. (Wilfredo Prieto, La Habana, February 2006)

The Barcelona-based Cuban artist was the winner of the Cartier Award 2008