In my work, I use found objects, family archives, video, pyrographed wood, sound, ceramics, photography, and printmaking to explore intergenerational memory, selfhood, and erasure within identity. I use decolonization to heal trauma, flaying open a physical space where unlearning, remembrance, and relearning are possible. My practice uncouples familiar associations with didactic material to introduce viewers to vital historical figures within an institutional space—the art gallery—that has frequently undermined histories and aesthetic traditions of the Other. Moreover, the material I use transforms and evokes folk and craft traditions to elevate these artistic traditions that art institutions and scholars have overlooked.
In addition, I'm challenging stigmas tied to mental health, sexuality, addiction, and desire. Relying on tropes of humor and the absurd accommodates diasporic subjects carrying the burdens of history. My work invites other audiences to procure new knowledge while unlearning the legacies of colonization.
Christian Casas b.1994 is a first-generation Cuban-American artist, curator, and educator from Hialeah, Florida. He creates gatherings of found objects, video, set and sound design, familial photographs, ceramics, pyrography, printmaking, and painting to explore intergenerational memory, selfhood, and erasure within a diasporic experience. Through engaged acknowledgment, Casas evades romanticization of the human condition by calling upon viewers to reckon with complex intersections of intergenerational memory, selfhood, erasure, and time while (re)engaging with their own experiences in a global context of power and “otherness.”
Casas received an M.F.A. from Ohio State University (2022) and a B.A. from the University of Florida (2017). Casas has exhibited in regional and national galleries, universities, museums, and, most importantly, within the community.