The Ability to Dream
José Mesías,S.T. (Trinos por altoparlantes), de la serie La sociedad de los pájaros extraños,2025, car, speakers, CD, audio player, Courtesy: the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, Photo: José Mesías.
Ten years ago, GALLERIA CONTINUA became the first international contemporary art gallery to establish a permanent presence in Cuba. A decade later, the gallery celebrates this pioneering chapter with La Capacidad de Soñar / The Ability to Dream, a major group exhibition featuring 40 Cuban artists. The anniversary program will extend throughout the month of May with performances, events, and artistic encounters that will highlight the richness and dynamism of Cuba’s contemporary scene.
Carlos Garaicoa, Dolor Duelo, 2010- 2020. Photo by Carlos Garaicoa. Courtesy: the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA
This celebration in Havana follows the 15th anniversary of the gallery’s Beijing space earlier this year, and precedes the 35th anniversary of its founding site in San Gimignano this September — which will be marked by solo exhibitions by Yoan Capote and Alicja Kwade, alongside a collective show.
Together, these milestones reflect GALLERIA CONTINUA’s role as a forerunner in creating global, destination-based art spaces, and its enduring commitment to building bridges across cultures and ages through contemporary art, often venturing beyond the conventional tracks of the art scene.
The Ability To Dream’ 2025, exhibition, GALLERIA CONTINUA / Habana, Photo: Linet Sánchez.
“The driving ideal behind our gallery is that art, like the wind, should not be stopped by borders. If this were just a statement or a general principle, we wouldn’t have settled in Cuba. The kind of work that defines GALLERIA CONTINUA – both on and off the island – is participatory, inclusive, generous, and extraordinary in its love for art and its commitment to overcoming boundaries. These are values we have found, cherished, and shared with the Cuban people.”
A standout moment in GALLERIA CONTINUA’s history in Cuba took place on December 16, 2014, when artist Michelangelo Pistoletto enacted his iconic symbol of the Third Paradise on the sea off the coast of Havana. The performance, organized in collaboration with curator Laura Salas Redondo, the artist Kcho and the fishermen of Havana, was a poetic gesture symbolizing renewal and balance between nature and society. Remarkably, the very next day, on December 17, 2014, the governments of Cuba and the United States announced the historic resumption of diplomatic relations after more than five decades of tension. This powerful coincidence underscored the gallery’s commitment to fostering dialogue through contemporary art and confirmed the necessity of establishing a long-term presence in Cuba to continue promoting cross-cultural understanding and engagement.
Michel Pérez Pollo -Pascale Marthine Tayou, 'Vidas Paralelas' 2022, exhibition view Galleria Continua / Habana. Photo by Nestor Kim. Courtesy: the artists and GALLERIA CONTINUA
During the 12th Havana Biennial (May 2015), GALLERIA CONTINUA took over the Águila de Oro, a former 1940s cinema located in the heart of Havana’s Chinatown, to present Perimetro, a site-specific artwork by Daniel Buren. Later that year GALLERIA CONTINUA formalized its presence in Cuba in that same space under the name Arte CONTINUA Habana. The first exhibition, Anclados en el Territorio , opened on November 27, 2015, and featured six Cuban artists, Alejandro Campins, Elizabet Cerviño, Carlos Garaicoa, Susana Pilar, Reynier Leyva Novo and José Yaque. Each artist explored and responded to the site’s layered history— its architecture, its past as a cinema, its location in Chinatown, and its broader Cuban context—through new commissions and research- based artistic interventions.
By transforming this historic site into a hub for contemporary art, GALLERIA CONTINUA reaffirmed its mission to bridge culturallegacies – as it has done across its eight spaces worldwide – fostering a dialogue between Cuba’s rich cultural heritage and its evolving artistic landscape.
For ten years, GALLERIA CONTINUA has played a significant role in introducing Cuban artists to international audiences and bringing global artists to Cuba. Notable highlights from 2016 include Anish Kapoor’s solo exhibition at the gallery space, Michelangelo Pistoletto’s major solo show at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and an exhibition by Jannis Kounellis at the Wifredo Lam Contemporary Art Centre. From this time, Arte CONTINUA Habana has hosted numerous significant exhibitions, enriching a common vision between Cuban and international artists including Chen Zhen, Hans Op de Beeck, Zhanna Kadyrova, Jorge Macchi, Pascale Marthine Tayou, and Julio Le Parc, among others - alongside a vibrant community of talented Cuban artists whom we are now proud to celebrate.
Alejandro González, Cuba año cero, 2009-2012Photo by Alejandro González Courtesy: the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA
The gallery represents a number of Cuban artists, beginning with Carlos Garaicoa, who has played a pivotal role in fostering cultural exchange through his Artista x Artista program, which facilitates residencies and cultural exchanges between Cuban and international artists. Over time, the gallery has expanded its local roster to include artists who have achieved worldwide recognition, such as Alejandro Campins, Yoan Capote, Iván Capote, Elizabet Cerviño, Osvaldo González, José Mesías, Luis López-Chávez, Susana Pilar, and José Yaque.
Beyond exhibitions, GALLERIA CONTINUA also worked extensively in public spaces with projects such as Daniel Buren’s Promenades à La Havane — a series of site-specific interventions installed on doors and throughout the streets of the city — and JR’s GIANTS, Alain an ephemeral public installation, which transformed the side wall of the gallery into a vibrant work of art during 13th Havana Biennial (April 2019). The gallery also promotes educational initiatives, offering workshops, conferences, and performances that engage both local and international communities. These programs aim to use art as a non-verbal language to bridge cultural divides and foster intercultural understanding.
To celebrate its enduring presence and deep commitment to Cuba, GALLERIA CONTINUA presents The Ability to Dream (La Capacidad de Soñar), a group exhibition marking the 10thanniversary of its Havana space. The show brings together 40 Cuban artists—emerging and established, from both on and off the island— with whom the gallery has collaborated over the past decade. The exhibition continues a narrative developed across the gallery’ spaces around the world through various chapters of The Ability to Dream.
The show will feature the work of Juan Carlos Alom, Balada Tropical, Abel Barroso, Alejandro Campins, Yoan Capote, Iván Capote, Celia & Yunior, Laura Carralero, Yaima Carrazana, Elizabet Cerviño, Gabriel Cisneros, Ariamna Contino, Raúl Cordero, Arlés del Río, Susana Pilar Delahante, Jenny Feal, Leandro Feal, Joaquín Ferrer, Diana Fonseca, Carlos Garaicoa, Rocío García, Flavio Garciandía, Alejandro González, Osvaldo González, Álex Hernández, Orestes Hernández, Reynier Leyva Novo, Luis López Chávez, Carlos Martiel, Yornel Martínez, José Mesías, Yanelis Mora, Michel Pérez Pollo, Eduardo Ponjuán, Wilfredo Prieto, Ángel Ricardo Ríos, René Francisco Rodríguez, Lázaro Saavedra and José Yaque.
About the gallery:
Founded in 1990 in San Gimignano, Italy, GALLERIA CONTINUA has expanded its locations to Beijing, Les Moulins, Havana, São Paulo, Rome and Paris. Remaining faithful to the spirit of perpetual evolution, and committed to engaging the widest possible audiences in contemporary art, GALLERIA CONTINUA has built a strong identity through its bonds and experiences, thriving away from the conventional urban centres, in completely unexpected yet timeless locations. The gallery inaugurated its permanent space in Havana, in Aguila de Oro, a cinema theater from the ‘50s at the heart of Havana’s Chinatown, in November 2015.
The exhibition opened with a reception on May 17, from 11:30 am to 7:00 pm. The exhibition will run through July 19, 2025. For more information about this exhibition and others at Galleria Continua, please visit their site here. Galleria Continua can also be found on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Artsy.
