Reynier Leyva Novo (known to the art world as Chino Novo) is particularly appropriate to showcase here and now in Washington, DC, an international city whose history and present are replete with irony. Formed 233 years ago, the District of Columbia is the seat of the U.S. government and a symbol of its democracy—yet the city’s own residents, numbering some 700,000 people, are not represented in Congress. The founders enacted this strange exclusion to limit undue influence on the political structure, but that hasn’t stopped the profusion of lobbyists representing all manner of corporate and special interests. The city’s architecture boldly echoes classical Greek buildings, evoking the historic seat of constitutional government—one deriving its powers from the consent of the governed and founded, in our case, on the premise that all men are created equal—even though many of our founding fathers (like the Greek philosophers) were slave holders.

Novo, one of Cuba’s leading conceptual artists, plays with exactly these types of contradictions. This exhibition of work focuses on his canny response to the tendency of authoritarian leaders to shape imagery—and hence reality—to their will. Whereas dictators around the globe have altered photographs and “history” for their own purposes and power, in these pieces Novo turns the tables: appropriating the methods of the powerful, Novo undermines those in power by erasing them from images in which they once figured prominently. This art—ultimately, this activism—calls into question the extent of influence these figures have on our lives. His work can be seen not only as a weapon of protest but also as a statement by which the oppressed can proclaim freedom from oppression.

Faced with the despotic manipulations and hegemonic influences that saturate the political world, Novo has managed to turn these powerful conversations—between art and power, between what we see and what is real—into mesmerizing images that challenge us to consider how symbols, icons, and myth affect our perceptions and our realities. Is he erasing history, or revealing the story?

Terzo Piano is pleased to bring Novo’s sleight of hand to our nation’s capital, where the art of politics underlies our daily lives.