José Bedia: 1976 – 2026

Omar-Pascual Castillo was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1971. Graduating in 1994, he moved to Spain in 1998, where he still lives and currently works as a freelance contemporary art curator and editor. He has published over two hundred critical texts in catalogues and journals, such as Atlántica, art.es, ArtNexus, Sublime Magazine and Dardo, as well as monographs with Ediciones Polígrafa (Barcelona) and Turner Libros (Madrid / Mexico). He has been artistic director at a number of venues, the latest being the Nova Invaliden Galerie in Berlin (2015–2017) and the 1st LPGC Contemporary Art Encounters, The Taken City (2021). James López is Professor of Spanish at the University of Tampa, where he founded and co-directs the Center for José Martí Studies Affiliate, which supports and publishes research in the history of Cuban émigré communities of the 19th and early-20th centuries. Bárbaro Martínez-Ruiz is an art historian specializing in African and Caribbean art and religious practices. His work challenges standard academic boundaries associated with “visual culture”. Following professorships in Havana and the U.S., he was the 2017-2018 Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Oxford University. Suset Sánchez Sánchez (Havana, 1977) is a Cuban exhibition organizer – her Rumor... Relatos Decoloniales en la Colección “la Caixa” was a prizewinner at the Barcelona CaixaForum’s inaugural Comisart, in 2013 – and art critic. Based in Madrid since 2004, she has headed the Latin American art collection at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) since 2023 and joined the advisory board for the renovation of the permanent exhibition at the Museo de América in Madrid in 2024. François Vallée is a grandes écoles preparatory professor of Spanish language and culture in Rennes, as well as a literary translator, art critic and Cuban art collector. He has translated two novels by Nivaria Tejera into French, Espero la noche para soñarte, Revolución and Buscar otro nombre al amor, as well as various works by Juan Abreu: his memoirs, Debajo de la mesa, a novel, El pájaro, and a collection of his poems, Emanaciones. Alan West-Durán (Cuba, 1953) is Professor of Cultures, Societies and Global Studies at Northeastern University, in Boston. He is the author of two books of poems, as well as a book of essays, Tropics of History: Cuba Imagined (1997).