LIUDMILA & NELSON

Liudmila & Nelson (Liudmila Velasco and Nelson Ramírez-de-Arellano-Conde) (b. Moscow and Berlin in 1969) are a collaborative team known for their cutting-edge conceptual photography. They have been working together in Havana since 1994 and have been widely exhibited throughout the world, including representing Cuba at the Venice Biennial in 2013.  Currently, Nelson is the director of the Wifredo Lam Center for Contemporary Art and as such is the director of the Havana Biennial.

The photographs from the series Absolut Revolution, represent several thematic and technical directions in the artists’ work, for which their starting point is the monument to José Martí, the writer laureate and revolutionary hero who fought for Cuba’s independence from Spain (1898). The surrounding plaza, originally known as the Plaza Cívica José Martí, was renamed Plaza de La Revolución José Martí after the 1959 revolution. The monument and the plaza have become the quintessential symbols of both revolutions.  The title Absolut Revolution cleverly plays on the registered trademark for Absolut Vodka, the Swedish vodka advertised as being of premium quality, a vodka that by definition has no equal.

A more recent body of work, “Hotel Habana”, calls attention to the experience of time within the city of Havana.  Time and expectations of the future are the keys to understanding this body of work.  The duo combined images of a street or a city landmark over time, using archival photos from the 1940s and 50s. They would layer those archival images with their own current-day photographs and images that represent people’s uncertainty about the future, such as replacing the ideological billboards with advertisements for Coca-Coca, Zara, Samsung, etc., signs that, uniquely, don't exist in Havana.