Image: Coruña Fine Arts Museum, A Coruña
Coruña Fine Arts Museum is presenting 'Habana Mater. 2003-2023', a photographic exhibition by the Coruñés artist Luis Gabú that turns to Havana’s architecture, silence and the legacy of Galician emigration in Cuba. The show runs from 15 May to 31 October 2026 and brings together 50 photographs made during Gabú’s repeated trips to the island over two decades.
According to the museum’s exhibition material, the project looks closely at the historic Centro Gallego de La Habana, a landmark built with the contributions of members of the Galician diaspora and home to the institution from 1914. Gabú’s images trace the building’s architectural changes, its spaces and its appearance before and after the restoration carried out between 2013 and 2015.
The exhibition frames Havana as more than a backdrop. Gabú’s photographs place architecture, memory and time in close relation, with silence emerging as a central visual element. The city appears at night and largely empty, shifting attention away from bustle and toward surfaces, facades and the traces left by earlier lives and uses.
The title 'Habana Mater' points to the significance of the Cuban capital in the making of Galician identity during the diaspora. The source material notes that Havana was not only an economic destination for thousands of emigrants, but also a place of collective creation where social, cultural and intellectual projects connected to Galicia took shape. In that context, the Centro Gallego functions in the exhibition as both a building and a historical reference point.
Several details in the photographs underline those ties. One facade still retains the shield of A Coruña, a surviving sign of the relationship between the city and the Galician community in Cuba. The exhibition uses such elements as material reminders of a shared history marked by migration, cultural exchange and institutional ambition across the Atlantic.
Gabú’s visual approach is described as shaped by the emotional, contemplative atmosphere associated with Edward Hopper, though the exhibition does not position the work as direct homage. Rather, the photographs present a Havana removed from tourist imagery and grand urban narratives. The city is shown at night, in near-empty streets and buildings, where light and architecture take on a poetic role.
The artist, born in A Coruña, has worked since 1988 on projects linked to travel and to places where memory remains partially hidden. His practice has taken him through Africa, Asia, America and Europe, and has included photography, painting and more abstract phases. In 'Habana Mater. 2003-2023', that wider trajectory is concentrated on a single city and one of its most emblematic Galician-linked buildings, at Coruña Fine Arts Museum through 31 October 2026.
