Ernesto Leal was part of the Cuban representation at the 2022 Kassel Documenta curated by Tania Bruguera. Documenta Fifteen took place from June 18 until September 25, 2022 in Kassel, Germany.
One of the two pieces by Cuban independent artist Ernesto Leal that are part of the 5th cycle of exhibitions at INSTAR's space for Documenta Fifteen is Untitled (Fragment 1, "CONTRA"), 2015. This artwork is one half of a banner printed on synthetic fabric which has been cut in half. The full banner reads, “CONTRADICTION.” Fragment 2 of this work (“DICTION”) is shown simultaneously in Havana, Cuba.
Miami-based [NAME] Publications writes:
"Invited by INSTAR (Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt) and the operarios who conceptualized and are realizing the project “Operational Factography” at Documenta Fifteen (Clara Astiasarán, Tania Bruguera, Ernesto Oroza), [NAME] (Gean Moreno and Natalia Zuluaga) organized “To The Bitter End: Civic Practices in Cuba at the Beginning of the 21 st Century”—an exhibition that begins to map a series of collectives, networks, and cultural spaces that came together in Cuba during the last two decades, either fully independent from or increasingly moving away from institutional oversight and support. These collectives formed around the need to generate new political imaginaries deeply connected to environmental practices, gender and racial struggles, necessary renewals of emancipatory thinking, new communicative opportunities afforded by digital technologies, and, in a few cases, ancestral knowledges.
The exhibition presents bulletins, zines, images, video documentation, articles, and correspondence that serve as proof of a handful of the many practices that took shape during this period. These documents are accompanied by a site-responsive installation by artist Ernesto Leal."