The Cuban Matrix is an ambitious project featuring an in-depth look at contemporary Cuban artwork, with emphasis on digital media exchange culture. The focus of the exhibition is the offline digital “mercado” (marketplace) sharing culture that has arisen around the phenomenon of “El Paquete Semanal”: a weekly terabyte packet of entertainment, downloaded webpages and information that is carried into Cuba, shared and consumed throughout Cuban society.

The works that TAM will be hosting exist and were created in conditions tempered by limited access to the virtual information systems that most of the developed world takes for granted. The artists and their works are shaped by these limitations and the cultural responses that grew to meet them. While the highspeed, constantly available information stream that forms the hallmark of contemporary societies in the global north is not at this time available to the people of Cuba, “El Paquete Semanal” forms a unique and ingenious workaround. It is bought cheaply and distributed from hand to hand, shared and downloaded. Containing everything from entertainment to software to international news, “El Paquete” acts as an object that mediates Cuba and the rest of the world.

This exhibition is organized by Maurizzio Hector Pineda, Benjamin W. Tippin, and Melissa Tran, under the direction of Max Presneill, the museum’s director, and along with the assistance and support of the Torrance Art Museum Advocates (TAMA). Participating artists include: Ariamna Contino, Alejandro Figueredo Diaz-Perera, Jorge Otero Escobar, Diana Fonseca, Alexander Hernandez, Tony Labat with Juan Carlos Alom, Francisco Maso, Reynier Leyva Novo and Esterio Segura.