Exodus: Alternate Documents (1994-2024)

Willy Castellanos

Curated by Adriana Herrera

Fotofocus Biennial Backstories, Cincinnati, OH.

Sept. 26^th– Dec.21^st/2024

Willy Castellanos’s post-documentary practice emerged from questioning the discursive limits of the in-depth photographic record he made from the coasts of Havana, Cuba, during the 1994 Rafter Crisis. Castellanos photographed complete sequences of events that included everything from the construction of the rafts and farewell rituals to scenesof crowds launching into the sea, marking the end of the last utopia of the 20th century.

His creative exercise assumes the past as an open narrative that challenges the limits of each documentary image, constructing a chronicle capable of restructuring itself as it absorbs (through the years) other testimonial records—provided by the protagonists of the Exodus: the Rafters). His body of work reaffirms Walter Benjamin appreciation: “ History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogeneous, empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now”. The narrative multiplies with new stories in a now that is inseparable from the past and present experiences of those who, from the most diverse points of the planet, have followed the uncertain path of emigration.