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Press Release

Misleidys Francisca Castillo Pedroso
Atlas

March 6–April 19, 2025

In 1985, Sergio Oliva, a Cuban bodybuilder known as “The Myth,” competed in his final Mr. Olympia competition, the conclusion of a storied career that spanned decades of cultural and political revolution. That same year, Misleidys Francisca Castillo Pedroso, a different kind of body builder, was born in Güines, just outside of Havana. Pedroso, either unable or unwilling to speak from an early age, chose a less conventional path to communicate. In her late teens, she began making elaborate painted cutouts in her family apartment, installing them in an intuitive salon hanging with graphic strips of packing tape. The artist first hung her paintings in the bedroom, a private universe of self-styled hieroglyphs taped from floor to ceiling. The overwhelming effect was perhaps akin to peering into a private chapel or some recently-discovered tomb. In time, the works spilled out into other rooms, and years later, into galleries, universities, and museums.

From her home and studio in Alamar, Cuba, Pedroso had a view of the ocean but also of brutalist architecture anchored in sand, surrounded by palm trees, animals, and a robust community of people going about their lives. Pedroso’s immediate environment partly accounts for the artist’s visual vocabulary and her rendering of maternal figures, animals, fruits, and groups of curious observers. Harder to fathom is her consistent images of flexing, muscular bodies, disembodied limbs, and the presence of language despite the fact that she does not read or write.

Today, Pedroso lives and works in Córdoba, Spain, where she recently moved with her mother to be closer to family and for other quality of life issues related to Cuba and its complex political and economic realities. Despite this significant environmental change, it is the human body that most preoccupies Pedroso’s attention. Dancers leap in synchronicity, brawny figures pose and flex, and disembodied feet float like Milagro charms or stand at attention like Constantine’s foot. Though Pedroso’s intentions cannot be known, she demonstrates a fluid approach to sex, gender, time, and language. Ultimately, Pedroso’s layered, peaceful faces, fluid forms, and appreciation for the body evoke a respect for things of the flesh, and consequently, of life.

Misleidys Francisca Castillo Pedroso has exhibited at Fundación ONCE (Madrid, Spain), Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna, Austria), Collection Treger Saint-Silvestre, Museu Nacional Soares dos Reis (Porto, Portugal), Kendall Art Center (Miami, Florida), Centro de Arte Oliva (São João da Madeira, Portugal), Blum & Poe (Los Angeles, California), Galerie Christian Berst (Paris, France), and MARCH (New York, NY). Her work is in the permanent collection of Centre Pompidou (Paris, France). She currently lives and works in Córdoba, Spain.

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