Garaicoa, Prieto and Los Carpinteros anchor Cuban presence at ARCO, Matadero

Carlos Garaicoa, Wilfredo Prieto and Los Carpinteros anchored a visible Cuban presence across Madrid’s contemporary-art moment, their work turning up at the main ARCO fair and at CAN Art Fair/parallel events at Matadero Madrid. The clustering of names and institutions made the city one of the principal stages for Cuban-born and diaspora artists during this season.

By 6 March 2026 the circuit included gallery and institutional showings in Madrid and connections to Barcelona: Galería Elba Benítez presented an installation titled Party! Not Tea Party with Prêt-a-porter by Carlos Garaicoa at its center, credited as © Carlos Garaicoa with photo credit Luis Asín. That presentation sat alongside other offerings tied to established spaces, making gallery visibility part of the broader ARCO and Matadero moment.

Garaicoa’s earlier work also circulated in the Madrid scene: Upside Down Fundamentalisms, 2010 was shown by Gallery Barbara Gross as part of El viejo y el Nuevo, described in the exhibition material as small paper sculptures of religious symbols and incised contours of building facades. The presence of a 2010 work in current displays shows a through-line in Garaicoa’s practice between paper sculpture projects and the new installation work at Galería Elba Benítez.

Wilfredo Prieto’s Amarrado a la pata de la mesa, 2011 appeared in the same constellation of shows, credited to CA2M, Centro de Artes Dos de Mayo, Madrid. The pairing of Prieto’s 2011 piece with CA2M’s curatorial reach underlines how institutional collections and regional centers are part of the platform giving these works visibility during ARCO and Matadero programming.

Los Carpinteros contributed a commissioned installation originally created for the daily El Pais, with presentation credits listed as Courtesy of Ivorypress & Los Carpinteros. Ivorypress’s involvement and the El Pais commission signal a crossover between media-commissioned projects and gallery or fair presentation, amplifying Los Carpinteros’ footprint across Madrid’s fairs and parallel events.

The pattern of venues and credits—Galería Elba Benítez, Gallery Barbara Gross, CA2M, Ivorypress, and the El Pais commission—maps a clear Madrid-Barcelona theater for Cuban practice, a framing captured in the section titled "The diaspora of Cuban art in Madrid." That configuration places Garaicoa, Prieto and Los Carpinteros at the center of how Cuban creators and the diaspora are being staged in Spanish institutions during this contemporary-art moment.