For his exhibition at Museo Tamayo, Gonzalo Lebrija will expose pieces of his project Vía Láctea (Milky Way, 2016-17), for which he photographed a group of smokers in Havana while they were smoking tobacco of Vegas Robaina’s most selective production.

With a beam of light that emphasizes the cigarette smoke, Lebrija depicts the changing shapes that the cuffs produce while exploring the sociopolitical relations that can be born from smoking, both from the juxtaposition between the characters and the legendary tobacco house, and from the smoker image itself as a figure that suggests power.

Lebrija’s work is mainly focused on the study of time and the subjective experience that we have of it. Using video and photography as recording systems, the artist uses time as raw material to capture ephemeral moments, while trying to stretch the distance between the past and the future in order to investigate the concept of destiny and chaos in a succession of events. During an important part of his career, he has worked on events and traditions inside his geographical context, on a par with the social structures that these imply.