On He Who Attends

A student asked me where in my work my “Cuban-ness” comes in, if at all. I admit that the question took me aback as it usually does—it is a familiar question, and yet it seldom gets easier to answer. At times, it strikes me as if embedded in the question is a (perhaps unconscious or unintended) implication that there is such a fixed thing as “Cuban identity.” I admit that I’m unconvinced that there is, but to be sure, let’s take a step back and cover the circumstances of my birth, as that does appear to take center stage as a factor for this would-be Cuban identity.

I was born in Cuba in 1991, on the edge of the Caribbean in a dying communist state, shaped by Spanish colonialism, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and indigenous extermination. While that may seem at first glance to be a grim place to emerge into the world, I think, all things considered, I was lucky to have been born at all, even if it was in a place where class and politics define much of daily life. I was born prematurely with some complications to a lower-class, mixed-race family in a humble neighborhood on the outskirts of Havana called Parraga. I was born into what looked like an ideal nuclear family, both mom and dad in the home. That is, until that idea became too nuclear for my father, who apparently had better ways to spend his life than raising a child. Yes, dear reader, a fatherless person of color—I was well on my way to stereotypical statistic status. That left me with my mother, studying to become a radiologist at the local hospital, to make do with the abundant sunshine on our resource-scarce island paradise.

To give the sociopolitical climate a little more color and context, I was born into what’s called “The Special Period,” a time of extreme hardship after the Soviet Union dissolved. The “special”-ness of this era is a mere dark irony that encapsulates a seemingly typical Cuban propensity for dark humor, as Fidel Castro had promised that a “special period in a time of peace” was coming in the 1990s. What followed instead were food shortages, increased death rates, and a crisis in the health sector.

My mother, Yaismi, a former devout comrade of the hammer and sickle, grew increasingly disillusioned with the unkept promises of the revolution. Tasked with attending to the needs of her mother and sister while building shelters and hospitals for “The Party,” she began to see that all the promised generosity of the state never seemed to arrive. During this time, she fostered a genuine yearning to serve her community as she saw people whose needs required attention, choosing the medical field as her future vocation. As if she needed another living being to take care of, I announced myself in her life as a young pregnancy at the age of 19. Presumably, the choice to keep the pregnancy during her time as a medical student was due in large part to her belief that my father would share in the responsibility. Alas, like the empty promises of the communist state for which she had toiled, this too was another promise unkept.

I sometimes, even to this day, think of my father’s mental landscape on the day he chose to leave. Did he find himself looking down at my small two-month-old body, hungry and helpless, lying in a small crib in a humid room that shielded me from the menace of the outside world? Did he then, a young, able-bodied man, look down, see a small being in need of a father’s attention, and say to himself: ‘No… I have better things to do’? I’ll never know if it happened that way, but on some level, I know it’s true. Before I could utter a word, let alone create art, someone responsible for me chose to abdicate that charge. And on his way, he went.

Don’t pity that small child. On some level, you already know he eventually gained a voice and sense of agency—after all, you’re reading this. My father’s absence, though a wound at first, created space for someone else to see the value he left behind. In that vacuum, my mother—resilient, beautiful, and kind—became something extraordinary, a rare find in a society that tried so hard to make everyone the same. And soon, another man stepped into the gap my father left, drawn to what the remnants of the Soviet system could never quite erase—her humanity, her generous attention, her undeniable worth in a world that often privileged homogeneity over the individual.

This setback did not interrupt my mother’s drive to enter the medical field and be of service to the public. She entered the hospital system shortly after my father left and began working under an established radiologist. She attended to mothers needing ultrasounds to check on the status of the beautiful responsibilities growing inside them. Her boss at work was a woman with a son of a similar age as my mother. His name was Andrés. They had gone to school together but never paid each other much mind. That changed when he began to visit the hospital more often to “visit his mother.” According to family legend, it was being able to catch a glimpse of my mother or to get a chance at exchanging a few words with her that made him fabricate reasons for passing by the hospital. He’d bring his mother coffee and sometimes seemed to have an extra one to pass to my mother. As was his way, he’d find ways to attend, to be generous, and to be present.

Around eight months later, we find ourselves back in that room with a child in the crib, still struggling to grow but alive. This time another man stands over his little body. Andrés is there, likely sweaty from the Caribbean heat. I picture him looking down at my helplessness, the smallness I embodied, and perhaps, just for a moment, he’s struck by the weight of this choice. He’s 19, fit, his whole life ahead of him, and he must have felt the pull of everything he might be giving up. It would be reasonable for him to question: ‘Is this worth it? Am I too young? Is this just a summer romance?’ But maybe, amidst those questions, he sees a little being in need of a father’s attention, someone vulnerable and in need of a steady hand. Perhaps I cry out in that moment, and with a decisive stillness, he shuts out those doubts and lifts the child, ensuring that I’d never feel the sting of abandonment.

I like to imagine that my mother, walking back into the room, saw him there—this sweaty Caribbean Atlas with her world on his shoulder—and felt a sense of relief. I like to think a scene like this is what cemented their bond, with a mundane gesture as simple as lifting an undernourished baby—a task many mortals seem to fail at, as if it were a Herculean labor—but not this time. In this tale, a normal man from an unimportant corner of the world would appear titanic in the eyes of a struggling young mother.

That brings us back to that initial question. If “Cuban-ness” is a quality or identity, there must be a metric to measure something as more or less Cuban. Which father is more Cuban? The Hispanic stereotype who would go on to sire more children for whom he also abdicated his charge? Or this stranger who to this day tells me he never hesitated to call me his own? If you can forgive the line of questioning, I hope you can begin to share in my frustration with the limitations of such labels, consequential as they may be to our social and political discourse.

The truth, as I’ve come to understand it, is that the world is messy, dear reader. If you’re fortunate enough to live long enough, you’ll watch everyone you care about slowly fade away, and in that truth, the neat labels we use—Cuban, Black, Latinx, American, etc.—start to lose their weight. Life isn’t about defining ourselves through ancestry or history alone; it’s about how we carry the responsibility of those who came before us. How do we attend to the suffering of those around us? That’s the real question. Not who we are based on the past, but who we become through our actions, despite the circumstances of our birth. So, am I a “Cuban” artist? Perhaps, but only insofar as the circumstances of my birth have led me to revere the virtue of devoted attention. If I must choose a label, I choose the man who attends, he who is present, he who creates a surplus of value that positively affects the lives of those around him.

So how does this fit into the original question? How does my “Cuban-ness” intersect with my work? It touches it obliquely, as a byproduct of how I’ve come to understand the world. It doesn’t enter as you often hear from artists whose work centers on “representation,” as if personal achievement somehow spills over to uplift a collective. I hope it’s clear by now that I believe the logic of one individual representing the whole is dubious at best, even if it can be a warm source of community. Instead, I aim to “represent” those across human history who sought understanding, bettered the lives of others, and cultivated a command of their attention in the face of the uncertain, mysterious world we find ourselves in. This ethos of mindful attention and material intention is what I try to invoke in my sculptural work.

The root of this practice traces back to a formative experience with my adoptive father in Cuba. I was around three years old, out on El Malecón with Andrés while my mother worked at the hospital. We’d sit and watch the cars go by—those classic cars from the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s that still line Cuba’s streets to this day. He’d point to a car as it passed, naming its make, model, year, and color.

He’d point, and I’d follow his gaze, learning to look with intention. He was showing me that the world, this mysterious place, was something I could come to know piece by piece if I paid attention. Soon thereafter, I knew the colors and would point at them and make my own identifications; I learned not just to see but to look with purpose. This soon expanded into attending to and understanding the world around me. I began chronicling my surroundings through sketches and drawings. Every object, every neighbor, and the very walls of our home were captured on paper, acting as a lens through which I—a small, curious child—attempted to understand the universe.

Even my mother’s radiology books became a window, revealing that beneath the skin, we are all just animated skeletons with hopes and dreams. I was fascinated by human beings, inside and out.

In 1996, our relocation to the U.S. marked a new chapter. Struggling to learn the language, I relied on my ability to draw others around me in order to connect with them, cementing art as my primary method of communication. Drawing each person from life allowed me to connect with them when language fell short. I learned how diverse and beautiful every individual person was, each with their own story, written in the textures of their skin and the wrinkles of their faces.

This act of paying attention and studying the world became my earliest art practice—even back in Havana—where the task was simply to call each car the color it was. Today, it’s the foundation of my work—to attend fully and curiously to my subject, as if seeing it for the first time with wonder. Like my mother attended to me while building a better future. Like a man I didn’t know attended to my fatherlessness, teaching me to see, to look, to live with purpose. “No vivas por vivir,” he’d say—“Don’t live just to live.” As if to say: “Be more, do more, attend.”

Today, I find myself thinking about making my work much more about ensuring that those around me are seen and feel taken care of—to sculpt and act in such a way that my wife never feels an ounce of worry that the man she chose is here for her, that my students are inspired by the work I create, and that my potential future children never feel an ounce of callous neglect. I’m aiming to move my work from its focus on what humans looked like in the past to what can make us more human in the present.

Going forward, I will strive to carry that same attentive presence. Lately, I find myself more drawn to examining my immediate past rather than the mysteries of the ancient human story. It’s not about defining myself through heritage alone but about honoring the lives that came before me and the virtues they practiced with care and attention, helping me get to where I am. In this way, by truly leaning into my unique, particular—albeit Cuban—experience, I can make work that is inspired by my cultural background. The paradox is that a Haitian, a Russian, or an American can do the same. These labels we often wear with such pride are not monolithic or deterministic. Which is to say, when someone says “I’m a Cuban artist” or “I’m a Latinx stage performer” or “I’m a Chicano musician,” they are, in effect—likely without malice or ill intent—indirectly inviting you to make assumptions about them or the kind of work they create.

So, dear reader, I ask you not “Who are you?” or “What do you identify as?” Rather, I’d prefer to ask a question more consequential, interesting, and revealing:

“What do you pay attention to?”