Text by Guillaume Kientz, Enrique Martínez Celaya, Joes Segal.
Martínez Celaya's interdisciplinary works meditate on themes of exile and the fantasy of return
This volume brings together three major exhibitions by the Cuban American painter Enrique Martínez Celaya (born 1964), each dedicated to Cuba: Los muertos llaman al alba, The Word-Shimmering Sea and The Sextant. Conceived across Havana, New York and Los Angeles, these installations offer a sustained reflection on exile and the possibility of return. The work moves from the imagined terrain of memory to the symbolic distance of the sea, culminating in the reconstruction of the artist's childhood home in sugar. Drawing on personal history and cultural memory, Martínez Celaya uses painting, sculpture and installation to examine displacement and belonging. These works engage with the emotional weight of Cuba while resisting fixed narratives, proposing instead a space where memory remains fragmented. Across these projects, the artist explores how identity is shaped through absence, rupture and the persistence of longing.
STATUS: Forthcoming | 12/8/2026
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Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Guillaume Kientz, Enrique Martínez Celaya, Joes Segal.
Martínez Celaya's interdisciplinary works meditate on themes of exile and the fantasy of return
This volume brings together three major exhibitions by the Cuban American painter Enrique Martínez Celaya (born 1964), each dedicated to Cuba: Los muertos llaman al alba, The Word-Shimmering Sea and The Sextant. Conceived across Havana, New York and Los Angeles, these installations offer a sustained reflection on exile and the possibility of return. The work moves from the imagined terrain of memory to the symbolic distance of the sea, culminating in the reconstruction of the artist's childhood home in sugar. Drawing on personal history and cultural memory, Martínez Celaya uses painting, sculpture and installation to examine displacement and belonging. These works engage with the emotional weight of Cuba while resisting fixed narratives, proposing instead a space where memory remains fragmented. Across these projects, the artist explores how identity is shaped through absence, rupture and the persistence of longing.
