El Encanto
Maite Iribarren (College of Engineering, Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design)
El Encanto is a sculptural installation that invites dialog between Cuban exiles in Miami and their descendants. The installation presents hypothetical relics of El Encanto, a luxury department store in Havana that was bombed in a symbolic act of terrorism during the Cuban Revolution. The installation indulges the viewer in both personal and inherited nostalgia for a pre-revolutionary Cuba while confronting them with the difficult complexities of this nostalgia.