José Miguel Cano – Nodes

Nodes is a virtual exhibition by Cuban artist José Miguel Cano Álvarez, whose practice is rigorously grounded in conceptual art in its most genuine sense: as a mode of critical thinking and symbolic exploration that does not renounce aesthetic values. In his work, the idea does not function as a pretext or a mere statement, but rather as the organizing core from which forms, materials, and visual relationships are carefully articulated. This internal coherence clearly distances his practice from superficial or erratic approaches to conceptualism, where formal precariousness is often mistaken for discursive radicalism.

One of the most consistent features of Cano Álvarez’s artistic language is the metaphoric force achieved through the appropriation and re-signification of everyday objects. By displacing these elements from their habitual functions, the artist transforms them into carriers of tension, silence, and open-ended questions. The object, far from being a simple resource, becomes a critical device that condenses multiple layers of meaning, activating readings that oscillate between the intimate and the collective, between personal experience and shared memory.

From this perspective emerges an incisive vision that opens paths toward reflections on identity and dialogue within a political framework, without resorting to stridency or pamphleteering. Cano Álvarez’s work addresses the viewer through subtlety and ambiguity, privileging suggestion over explicit slogans. This strategy reinforces the conceptual density of his practice and situates it within a space where the political appears as an unavoidable dimension of contemporary experience—approached with critical intelligence and poetic depth.