Artworks by Misleidys Castillo Pedroso to discover in the exhibition Emporté par foule
In the context of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the exhibition Emporté par la foule (Carried away by the crowd) explores the links between creation and sport. It brings together artists who approach, through various mediums (drawing, painting, photography, installation, and video), sometimes with fascination, humor, or poetry, the aesthetic dimension of sport.
Three works by Cuban artist Misleidys, loaned by the gallery, were showcased to the public.
Art and sport are two seemingly distant domains, an unnatural alliance or clash of cultures, but they may well have a common history at the dawn of modernity. Sport is memory and it is much more than a game. It tells a story and erases the boundaries between disciplines. It is alive, spontaneous, and popular. A reservoir of myths and legends, sport is a conveyer of humanity. The state of grace, the vertigo of effort, the fascination of the unknown, the artist and the athlete share it in the studio, the stadium, the ring, or the road. Sports and art invest the imagination. They generate the most burning of emotions.
This Cuban artist has no other means of expression than that of her creation. The walls of her home, where she lives with her mother, are covered with drawings of bodybuilders, brown tape scattered along the outlines. A true community of men, women, hermaphrodites and wildlife, Misleidys has built her sociality through her work. Discovered by the gallery in 2014, she has been featured in more than 10 international exhibitions since 2018, including New Images of Man in Los Angeles, Flying High in Vienna, and Independent in New York. Acclaimed by Matthew Higgs and Karen Wong (New Museum, NYC), the artist has been the subject of recent reviews in the New York Times and Art in America.
A significant number of his works was donated to the Centre Pompidou collection in 2021.