Image: Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, New York
An opening reception for Wilay Méndez Páez’s solo exhibition, ‘La aleatoriedad de los símbolos/The Randomness of the Symbols,’ is scheduled for October 23 from 6 to 8 p.m. The exhibition is scheduled to run from October 24, 2026, through January 2, 2027.
The 2025/2026 Working Artist Project was curated by David Brenneman, the former Director and CEO of the Telfair Museums of Art.
‘La aleatoriedad de los símbolos’ forges steel and iron into fragments of African, Sumerian, and Egyptian symbols, presenting them as an ancestral alphabet reassembled to hold what history has tried to erase. The welded forms carry memories of exile, war, and diaspora, alongside the continuing reality that Blackness, migration, and marginality are met with bars, cages, and walls built to enclose.
The exhibition identifies ‘Campo de batalla [BattleField]’ as a 2026 work by Méndez Páez made from welded recycled metal. Méndez Páez is an Afro-Cuban artist whose work explores everyday life, urban space, and human connection through his identity as a Black Hispanic Caribbean man.
Born and raised in Cuba, Méndez Páez relocated to Atlanta in 2019, where his work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions. From 2020 to 2022, he was an artist in residence at the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, deepening his engagement with the city’s cultural and historical landscape.
