Ariel Cabrera appropriates historical painting and its long tradition to recreate a type of imaginary in which the rigor of the document submits to the fluidity of life and its traps. If we look closely we will understand that behind his combination of episodes related to the interwar period (1879-1895) and the Cuban War of Independence (1895-1898); the aesthetics of "La Belle Epoque"; the heroes and heroines; the Cuban Mambises and the fearsome Rough Riders, hides a visceral nonconformity towards the documentary and the historical. That is why the artist decides to delve into lurid scenes and aspects little touched by Cuban historiography. Two details should be taken into special consideration: Ariel Cabrera bases his images on deep research, through which he approaches and handles archival documents with patrimonial value; his painting is connected to photography, specifically with the aesthetics of the beginning of photography in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when it was still closely connected to painting. At the beginning of his career as an art student, Cabrera Montejo had the experience of being in constant interaction with collection objects, works of art and documents related to the collection of historical memories of Cuba. These documents transcended him as rare and truthful testimony, and nourished him with valuable information. This information differed in many aspects with the official account given by the State about the struggle for independence undertaken by the Cuban patriots in the second half of the 19th century. This is when the motivation to submit history to a revision in the realms of art arose in him. Assuming academic painting techniques to approach this aesthetic presupposition, contaminated with totally contemporary resources and images, is a way of desacralizing the narrative and vindicating painting as an exercise in historical and archival recording.

Graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte in 2004, Ariel has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, among them: New Works, Galleria Mazzoli, Modena, Italy; Escenas Secundarias, GE Galería, Monterrey, Mexico; Kindred Spirits, Ten Artist by the Hudson, Coral Gables Museum, Miami, USA; Cubans: Post-truth, Pleasure and Paint, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), Winston, USA; All that you have is your Soul, Factionart projects, Coates and Scarce Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), Winston, USA.Cubans: Post-truth, Pleasure and Paint, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), Winston, USA; All that you have is your Soul, Factionart projects, Coates and Scarry Gallery, London/ Los Angeles / New York; Good the Last Drop, Artium Gallery, Miami, USA; Emerging to Established, The Krause Gallery, New York, USA; Resilencias. The Other Cuba, Art District, Minnesota, USA; and Cachita, The Infinite Lightness of Being, The Olga M. Saladrigas Gallery, Miami, USA. He has also collaborated with the New York Academy of Art, Manhattan and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET), New York, USA. He is part of relevant collections such as those of the Pérez Art Museum (PAMM), Miami; the Beth Rudin DeWoody, New York; the Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia; The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), North Carolina; United Stated Embassy Madrid Art Collection, Madrid; Massimo Bottura Collection, Modena; and Jorge Pérez Collection, Miami.