Mónica Batard was born in Cabaiguán, Sancti Spiritus province in 1979. She always wanted to be an artist and knew she would be one since she began studying at the now defunct Oscar Fernandez Morera academy of fine arts, after ruling out dance, music theory and theater in her artistic training. From her early years as a student, she was drawn to abstraction, although she has also performed specific feminist interventions in her career, advocating for art made by women. In her constant quest for self-improvement, she completed her studies at the Jose Marti University, also in Sancti Spiritus province. She has delved into digital animation, hand-drawing each frame with an expressionist and deeply personal touch, and has exhibited her short films, which lie between video art and film creation, at the "Muestra Joven" ICAIC and the Camagüey International Video Art Festival. She was part of the collective exhibition "Once Libres" at the University of Havana, exhibited at the Havana Biennial in 2015, and in 2019 participated in collective projects and exhibited in alternative spaces such as Café Altamira in Cuba.
The Kendall Art Cultural Center (KACC), dedicated the past six years to the preservation and promotion of contemporary art and artists, and to the exchange of art and ideas throughout Miami and South Florida, as well as abroad. Through an energetic calendar of exhibitions, programs, and its collections, KACC provides an international platform for the work of established and emerging artists, advancing public appreciation and understanding of contemporary art.
The Rodríguez collection is a blueprint of Cuban art and its diaspora. Within the context of the new MoCA-Americas the collection becomes an invaluable visual source for Diaspora identity. It represents a different approach to art history to try to better understand where we come from to better know where we are heading.
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