Adrián Fernández Milanés

Born in Havana (Cuba) in 1984, Adrián Fernández Milanés has studied visual arts at the Academy of Fine Arts of Alejandro San from 2000 to 2004 and then at the the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, from 2005 to 2010. Even though he specialized in sculpture, he began to experiment with photography quite early in his career, and it later became his favorite medium of expression.

His work uses the image as and identity element. He explores the image that defines the identity of a group or a social sector through the elements that characterize it from an iconographic point of view.

In three of its projects ""Estilo de vida"" (Lifestyle), ""Retrato"" (Portrait), ""Del Ser o del Parecer" (Of Being, or of Appearing to Be), Adrian Fernandez captures the lifestyle and the personal and material universe of a part of the population who still lives in Nuevo Vedado, one of the Havana districts where the Cuban upper classes used to live before 1959. The artist shows pieces of a reality that still lasts in the current Cuban social system. The facades of the houses in this neighborhood, their interiors and decorative objects of their domestic space are photographed separately.

The artist currently works as an independent artist and documentary photography professor for the NYU, the Tisch School of the Arts, the Office of Special Program Abroad and the Ludwig Foundation of Cuba. He has had several collective and solo shows internationally, and his work is part of many private and public collections throughout the world.