Francisco Masó (Havana, 1988) is a visual artist living and working in Miami. He received a Bachelor degree in Stage Design from the Instituto Superior de Arte. He also graduated from both Behavior Art School, led by Tania Bruguera, and the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts. He attended the artist-in-residence program at Contemporary Art Center Bétonsalon in Paris. Prior to that, he participated in different workshops realized by outstanding artists like Artur Zmijewski, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Dan Perjosvchi. Recent exhibitions include Solid Abstraction: Disobedient Strategies in Contemporary Cuban Art at Miami Biennale Foundation (2018), CINTAS Foundation Fellowships Finalist Exhibition 2017-2018 at Coral Gables Museum (2017), The Cuban Matrix at Torrance Art Museum (2017), Surreptitious Stripes at Arts Connection Foundation (2017) and The Global South. Visions and Revisions at Mana Wynwood Convention Center (2016). His works are part of Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Brillembourg Capriles Collection, Andreina Fuentes Collection, and C de Cuba Collection.
My work is a consequence of personal experiences around the relationship of power primarily between the Father –pater familias- and then his derivation in the State as a regimen of control of the society. My childhood in a rigid home characterized by the paternal violence, the constant relation with coaction modes and the necessity of finding my own space has defined a defensive personality, that avoids sentimental approaches. Not only the trauma has been generated because of the abuse of paternal power, but also the circumstances of growing in a period of economic crisis and the condition of living on an island under absolute power. All these conflicts have been during my life. In this sense, the concept of power is an obsession in my work through the translation of personal experiences from a familiar environment and sociocultural context.
I usually appropriate of existing tools outside the field of art as “participant observation” (a term from ethnography) to develop critical models, execution strategies and development structures based on actions, ideas, and ethical concepts. “Participant observation” understood as the experimentation both at the intellectual and corporeal level of the translation of an existential and social experience, positions me in a context of active participation of the society that constitutes my object of study. I believe in the capacity of development of contemporary art from a socially active attitude. My work is focused on the researching of political and economic phenomena that are materialized on contemporary artistic practices ranging from the generation of a video to an abstract painting.
