Sponsored by Human Rights Foundation, Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara joins Fountainhead Arts as its Art in Protest Resident
Luis Manuel will be in residence at Fountainhead through December 15.
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara (b. 1987, Havana) is a self-taught artist whose practice spans sculpture, drawing, performance, and public intervention, and who has spent much of his career asking who has the right to Cuba’s shared symbols. His early sculptures, assembled from burnt wood, rag, and scrap, gave way to performances that put his own body in the frame. In Miss Bienal (2015) he crowned himself queen of a Havana Biennial that excluded him; in Drapeau (2019) he wore the Cuban flag as everyday clothing. He co-founded the Museum of Dissidence and the independent #00 Biennial and became a leading voice of the San Isidro Movement. Arrested in July 2021 during nationwide protests, he served five years in Guanajay maximum-security prison, where he continued to make work, including the Clowns drawings and Charcoal Portrait of Schrödinger’s Cat, which invited the public to purchase days of his sentence. He arrived in Miami in exile in July 2026. His honors include the Prince Claus Award, Václav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent, the Rafto Prize, and recognition among Time’s 100 most influential people.
