Roberto Fabelo’s Medula exhibition draws attention at Havana National Museum

The Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana has mounted Medula, a new solo presentation by Roberto Fabelo that assembles paintings and drawings described by the museum as an “exclusive selection” of the artist’s recent work. The MNBA release reproduced on Radio Rebelde said “Visitors to the MNBA can enjoy, from November 21 to March 2026, an exclusive selection of Fabelo’s works in the central courtyard gallery and in the temporary exhibition hall on the third floor of the Cuban Art Building.”

The MNBA frames Medula as an invitation to explore recurring tensions in Fabelo’s practice. “The exhibition invites museum-goers to delve into the symbolic and profound universe of the winner of the 2004 National Award for Visual Arts, where the human and fantastic aspects coexist in a constant exploration of identity, collective memory, and the Cuban imaginary,” the museum text states. The release adds that the show “reflect[s] his concern with representing the complexities of the human condition and the relationship between the individual and the environment” and that it “showcases the most significant aspect of his work in the last decade.”

Press coverage on February 16–17 emphasized the scale and reach of the presentation inside the Cuban Art Building, where the central courtyard gallery hosts site-specific views while the third-floor temporary exhibition hall presents a broader sequence of drawings and paintings. Radio Rebelde’s item on the opening carried photographs and reproduced the museum’s curatorial statement, underlining the institutional framing of the run that ends in March 2026.

Fabelo’s long career and recent projects give Medula several points of reference. ArtCritic notes that Fabelo was “Born in 1950 in Guáimaro” and called him “this compulsive graphomaniac” who “has transformed every available surface into an artistic territory of conquest, from the yellowed pages of a nineteenth-century anatomy treatise to the walls of the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana.” The critic also observed that “The artist turns 75 this year,” and singled out the recent life-size rhinoceros sculptures, writing that “The recent life-size rhinoceros sculptures exhibited at the Kennedy Center (Sobrevivientes, 2023) mark a turn towards a more affirmed monumentality.”

Critical responses cited by arts press trace motifs that reappear in Medula. ArtPulse described one of Fabelo’s recurring images as “The naturally gross–the ugly insect, made aesthetically subtle, even surprisingly beautiful, is one of the hallmarks of Fabelo’s transformative genius,” and highlighted cockroach-human hybrids as a provocative strand in his work. ArtCritic connected those Kafka‑inspired impulses to larger political readings in projects such as the 2023 Madrid Metamorphosis series and the Kennedy Center Sobrevivientes installation.

Medula sits alongside a documented string of solo shows and biennial appearances in Fabelo’s catalogue: the 2009 Survivors mixed media installation at the National Museum of Fine Arts during the 10th Havana Biennial, the 2015 Persistence at ARTIS 718 Gallery in Havana, and exhibitions abroad including Couturier Gallery in Los Angeles in 2014. The MNBA presentation, running through March 2026, offers Havana audiences a concentrated view of the past decade of work that critics and the museum alike identify as central to Fabelo’s recent practice.