The Cuban photographer Laura Capote Mercadal opened her new solo exhibition titled Expolios. Habitar los límites this Thursday at the Visual Arts Center in Mérida, Yucatán. The exhibition features a dozen images that explore the female nude as an intimate territory against the backdrop of dislocation.
The exhibition brings together photographs taken between 2019 and 2025 in two different locations: Cuba and the Mexican state of Yucatán, where the artist currently resides.
The curatorial text, signed by art critic David Mateo, identifies "the migratory experience of the artistic subject" as its central theme, although this journey is not narrated literally but rather through "the evolution of its conceptual, allegorical, and aesthetic processes."
Mateo describes the exhibit as organized around "two representational spaces, autonomous yet interdependent": the five photographs taken in Cuba in 2019 form, according to the curator, "a visual log of uprooting and farewell" that "record the gradual emotional distancing from a territory that still represents their place of belonging," cited the independent magazine Rialta.
For its part, the images created in Yucatán express the transition from "the traveler's gaze" to "a desire for closeness, a sensitive exploration of the foreign context."
Throughout the entire series, the artist's naked body—photographed in "dilapidated, uninhabited, bordering, residual" spaces—acts as the sole constant element.
"The nude is the only element that remains active throughout the entire transition process," writes Mateo.
"The body persists while the landscape changes and acts as a sort of personal territory, a kind of 'portable' homeland from which the artist establishes new connections with the environment," she notes.
Exploits. Inhabiting the Limits is the second solo exhibition by Capote Mercadal in Mexico.
In December 2024, she presented the exhibition Tramas in the same Salón Gallos of Mérida, her first solo exhibition outside of Cuba, featuring ten photographs focused on the braid as an identity motif.
Before emigrating, the artist developed an extensive career on the island starting in 2012, with exhibitions in venues such as the Fábrica de Arte Cubano and the Historical Photographic Archive of the Office of the Historian of the City.
Currently based in Mérida, the artist has developed a robust photographic practice that explores the intersections between the body, landscape, memory, migration, and political ecology.
Her photographic work connects personal experience with broader historical and social narratives, reflecting on identity and territory.
His growing career includes solo exhibitions in Cuba and Mexico, as well as significant accolades, including the Alfredo Sarabia National Photography Biennial Awards and the Artlab 2025 Award from Galería Arte 1010.
Part of the Expolios series was previously published in the academic journal Latin American Literature Today, which broadened the work's reach before its presentation in the gallery.
Mérida has established itself in recent years as one of the main hubs for Cuban artists in the diaspora, and the journey of Capote Mercadal illustrates how this creative community continues to produce work from exile that directly engages with the experience of having left the island.
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