Gold teeth glisten inside a hairy grin. Tattoos on brown skin narrate hard knocks and aspirational dreams. Blue waters ripple seductively into eternity. And dark, graphic shadows invite a game of ‘guess who?’. These are all glimpses into the urban life of Cuba through the lens of Rodrigo Sombra for his series Insular Night: Invisible Gardens. The Brazilian photographic artist was first drawn to the country in 2014 and subsequently returned multiple times to complete this well-received body of work last year. His sensitive images of anonymous encounters, beautiful landscapes and faded buildings have an intimacy and mystery about them that reflect his outsider perspective on a country rapidly pulling away its political and social shroud.

“The conceptual thread that binds this work together is the notion of insularity, which is a decisive feature of Cuban culture,” Sombra explains. “Not only in its geographical meaning; that is, what defines a body of land surrounded by water. In my work insularity is rendered both as a predicament and a metaphor for contemporary Cuban reality. This geographical concept allowed me to interact with the ways Cubans gaze at what lies beyond their margins and to explore the contradictory effects of the foreign presence in the island – a crucial question in Cuba especially since the early 1990s when the country gradually opened itself to tourism and capitalism.”

This young artist, who hails from Bahia, studied journalism and film before finding his voice through photography. Insular Night has been published as a book with Paper Journal and become a solo exhibition at Galeria São Paulo Flutuante, and Sombra’s work has also been featured in Der Greif, Fish-eye and Fotoroom magazines.

Words Helen Jennings
Visit Rodrigo Sombra

Published on 17/09/2020