Los Carpinteros: Dagoberto Rodríguez (Cuban b. 1969), Marcos Castillo (Cuban b. 1971) and Alexandre Arrechea (Cuban b. 1970)

The Havana-based collective Los Carpinteros (The Carpenters) formed in 1991 as a trio while still students at the Instituto Superior del Arte (ISA). Comprised of Marcos Castillo, Dagoberto Rodríguez, and Alexandre Arrechea (until his departure in 2003), Los Carpinteros adopted their name in 1994, as a way of challenging notions of individual authorship and harking back to an older guild tradition of artisans and skilled laborers. Interested in the intersection between art and society, fine art and craft, the domestic and the public, and the boundaries between the functional and the non-functional, their clever and witty drawings, sculptures, and installations, such as the present work Molino de viento (Wind Mill), executed by the original trio, reveal a do-it-yourself aesthetic replete with contradictions and hybrid forms that simultaneously reference everyday objects, furniture, and architecture.