jorge alberto cadi in paris photo 2022

untitled, 2019, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 11 x 16.5 cm

L’œuvre de Jorge Alberto Cadi - né à la Havane en 1963 - exhale une cubanité emplie de saudade, d’autodérision, de critique sociale et d’une infinie tendresse pour notre condition de mortels.

The work done by Jorge Alberto Cadi - born in Havana in 1963 - emanates a Cubanness full of saudade, selfderision, social critique and an infinite tenderness for our condition as mortals.

untitled, 2020, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 16.6 x 22.8 cm

untitled, 2020, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 25 x 20 cm

untitled, 2020, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 22.6 x 18 cm

« El Buzo » - le plongeur ainsi que le nomment les Havanais - arpente inlassablement les rues de la ville en quête de ses rebuts, de ses objets déclassés. Depuis plus de vingt ans, tel un glaneur d’Agnès Varda, il collecte photographies, valises, boîtes, ou coupures de journaux dont il croise les destins, au propre comme au figuré. Non pas pour les réhabiliter, mais parce qu’il décèle dans ces objets un fort potentiel d’extrapolation, de merveilleuses possibilités narratives.

“El Buzo” - the diver as he is called by Havanans tirelessly treks the city streets in search of his junk, his rejected objects. For more than twenty years, like one of Agnès Varda’s gleaners, he has been collecting suitcases, boxes, photographs, and newspaper clippings whose destinies he intertwines, both literally and figuratively. Not to rehabilitate them, but because he detects a real potential for extrapolation, for marvelous narrative possibilities, in these objects.

untitled, 2020, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 22.3 x 18.5 cm

untitled, 2020, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 25.5 x 20 cm

untitled, 2020, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 25.3 x 20.3 cm

Cadi procède autant par hybridation que par concrétion, collant ici, découpant là, cousant ceci avec cela. Boltanskien dans son usage mémoriel de la photographie, warholien lorsqu’il coud des greffons d’images entre eux, El Buzo cherche avant tout à révéler ce que ces images cachent.

Cadi works as much through hybridization as through concretion, gluing here, cutting there, sewing this to that. A Boltanskian in his memorial use of photography, a Warholian when he sews grafts of images together, El Buzo seeks above all to reveal what these images hide.

À première vue, même s’il se livre dans ses photomontages - à la manière d’une Hannah Höch - à une satire sans compromis des normes bourgeoises et religieuses, ses sujets demeurent continuellement en prise avec nos affres les plus archaïques.

At first sight, even if in his photomontages he gives in in the style of Hannah Höch - to a satire that doesn’t compromise with bourgeois and religious norms, his subjects continue to have a grip on our most archaic torments.

two previous pages untitled, 2020, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 20.3 x 25.3 cm

untitled, 2020, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 21.7 x 17 cm

untitled, 2020, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 19 x 23.5 cm

untitled, 2019, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 25 x 20 cm

untitled, 2019, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 20 x 25.5 cm

Les fantômes qu’il exhume sont-ils tapis dans l’ombre comme des remords ou comme les traces de nos chers disparus ?

Are the ghosts exhumed by Cadi hiding in shadows as regrets or as traces of our dearest deceased ?

untitled, 2019, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 25.5 x 20 cm

untitled, 2020, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 18 x 23.6 cm

untitled, 2020, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 22.4 x 16.5 cm

Les personnages décapités portent-ils leur tête en signe d’aliénation ou, comme saint Denis, de résurrection ?

Do the decapitated characters hold their heads as a sign of alienation or, like Saint Denis, of resurrection ?

untitled, 2020, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 24.7 x 20.5 cm

untitled, 2020, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 19.7 x 24.7 cm

untitled, circa 2015, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 20.5 x 25.3 cm

Les attributs diaboliques dont ils sont parfois affublés sont-ils la marque de nos démons intérieurs ?

Are the diabolic attributes with which they are at times adorned the mark of our internal demons ?

untitled, circa 2015, collage and sewing on photography, 23.6 x 20.3 cm

untitled, 2019, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 25.7 x 20.3 cm

untitled, circa 2015, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 18.2 x 24 cm

Les vedettes de cinéma à la beauté flétrie nous renvoient-elles à notre propre déclin ?

Do the movie stars whose beauty has withered refer to our own decline ?

untitled, circa 2015, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 20.4 x 25.6 cm

untitled, circa 2015, collage and sewing on photography, 24 x 19 cm

Les lèvres cousues et les regards vides nous rappellent-ils notre infirmité à dire et à voir ?

Do the sewn lips and the empty stares recall our inability to say and see ?

untitled, 2020, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 20.3 x 25.1 cm

untitled, circa 2015, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 20.4 x 23.3 cm

Quant aux annotations et croquis énigmatiques dont Cadi accompagne parfois ses compositions, ils agissent comme un double-fond renfermant un sens plus enfoui encore. Seule l’omniprésence inquiétante des croix est élucidée : « tu vis dans cette bataille de ne pas faire face à ta croix, “regarde ta croix” ! »

As for the annotations and the enigmatic sketches that Cadi sometimes adds to his compositions, they serve as a false-bottom hiding an even more buried meaning. Only the omnipresence of crosses gets explained: “You live in a battle to not face your cross, “look at your cross”!”

untitled, 2020, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 20.2 x 25.2 cm

untitled, 2020, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 19.5 x 23.7 cm

untitled, 2019, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 24 x 18 cm

Cadi offre parfois une recomposition aux portraits qu’il dévisage. D’un mouvement schizophrénique, il plonge dans le jadis et y insère des Janus. Leur strabisme déroutant, qui casse les illusions d’une santé unifiée, empêche également un rapport frontal à l’image.

Cadi sometimes treats the portraits he contemplates to a re-composition. In a schizophrenic movement, he dives into the past and inserts Januses. Their disconcerting squinting, which breaks the illusions of a unified health, also prevents a frontal relationship to the image.

untitled, 2020, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 25.3 x 20.6 cm

untitled, circa 2015, collage and sewing on photography, 18.2 x 25.6 cm

untitled, 2020, ink, collage and sewing on photography, 20.2 x 25.2 cm

L’image érotique est la plus récente trajectoire de la retouche photographique d’El Buzo. La femme y est presque toujours lacée, partiellement ou totalement ; un appel au bondage, au shibari. La croix pend de mains qui pincent, fixe des tiers qui mordent, émerge de visages souriants, lascifs ou absents. Tantôt cette croix couvre deux seins, tantôt elle surplombe la scène. Comme en rappel.

The erotic image is the most recent development in El Buzo’s retouched photographs. The female figure is almost always laced up, partially or totally; a call to bondage, to shibari. The cross hangs from hands that pinch, affixes third parties that bite, emerges from smiling, lascivious or absent faces. Sometimes this cross covers two breasts, sometimes it overshadows the scene. As if as a reminder.

untitled, 2022, ink, sewing and collage on photography, 6.2 x 4 cm

untitled, 2022, ink, sewing and collage on photography, 6.2 x 4.7 cm

untitled, 2022, ink, sewing and collage on photography, 6.4 x 4.5 cm

untitled, 2022, ink, sewing and collage on photography, 5.9 x 4 cm

untitled, 2022, ink, sewing and collage on photography, 6.2 x 4.5 cm

untitled, 2022, ink, sewing and collage on photography, 6 x 4 cm

untitled, 2022, ink, sewing and collage on photography, 6.9 x 4 cm

untitled, 2022, ink, sewing and collage on photography, 6.4 x 4.5 cm

Quoi qu’il en soit, Cadi ne se départit jamais de sa bienveillance, voire de sa compassion. C’est notamment vrai lorsqu’il infléchit le fatum de ces exilés du passé en les invitant à d’improbables rencontres sur et à l’intérieur de ses valises - symbole du voyage empêché -, de ses boîtes ou autre objet collecté.

But no matter what, Cadi never strays from his kindness, his compassion even. This is particularly true when he redirects the fatum of these exiles of the past by inviting them to unlikely encounters on and inside his suitcases his suitcases -symbols of the impeded journey-, boxes or other collected objets.

untitled, 2020, ink, collage, photography and sewing on object assembly, 43.7 x 78 x 18.2 cm

untitled, 2015, ink and collage on projection camera, 13.5 x 14 x 25 cm

untitled, 2018, collage, ink and sewing on camera, 10 x 13.3 x 7.5 cm

untitled, 2015, ink, collage an sewing on holster, 31.5 x 14.5 x 4 cm

untitled, 2020, ink, collage, photography and sewing on box, 9 x 6.5 x 6.5 cm

« Quand tu fermes la valise, tu réunis des personnes qui ne se sont jamais vues. Ils retournent voyager... Parfois dans une autre dimension. » Ainsi donc, la valise - symbole, à Cuba, du déchirement, de l’errance, des séparations - redevient le lieu des possibles et des retrouvailles inattendues, le réceptacle de l’espoir.

“When you close your suitcase, you gather people who never saw each other. They come back to travel … Sometimes in another dimension.”

Thus the suitcase - a symbol, in Cuba, of division, of wandering, of separations - once more becomes a place of possible and unexpected encounters, the receptacle of hope.