Tribal Affinities and Body of Work
José Bedia is a Cuban artist, born in 1959, whose career has spanned over 5 decades. From his participation in the monumental exhibition Magiciens de la Terre in 1989 to winning First Prize at the Beijing Biennale in 2010, Bedia’s career and work have had an international outreach. His work merges his tribal and ethnographic interests, using a field work approach and adding layered social and historical elements of many world traditions. His talk will explore his personal travels, explorations and studies, as well as the vast tribal inspirations throughout his life, and how they shape his body of work.
José Bedia’s work is on view in the exhibition Under the Spell of the Palm Tree: The Rice Collection of Cuban Art. A living master draftsman and installation artist, Bedia left Cuba in the early 1990s for Mexico and later relocated to Miami. His work is a singular synthesis of the artistic traditions of Africa and the indigenous Americas.