Since the beginning of her career, Cuban artist Sandra Ramos has documented the conflicting experiences of living in her beloved but often challenging country. She frequently employs a visual narrative, casting herself as a child-like explorer or contemporary Alice in Wonderland.

For this exhibition Ramos has created two series of works on paper and one installation of large panoramic prints. The series,Collectibles, ironically titled, takes young Alice/Sandra on a tour of New York City, where she becomes entangled in the urban sprawl, encountering the depths of the subway system and the dizzying heights of sky scrappers. Ramos continues the US travelogue - on a national level and from a tougher critical viewpoint - with the Travel to the American Dream Series. Her interventions of texts and images on US passports questions the values the US claims to stand for. Departing from stereotypical patriotic ... images, Ramos adds drawn details and collaged objects to turn their original meanings on their heads. Habana Mirage, a series of four panoramic prints connects the island of Cuba, long isolated by conflict and the US embargo, to Manhattan island. This series bridges the distance between two cultures, as does the work of Sandra Ramos.*

Sandra Ramos lives and works in Havana, Cuba. She has exhibited extensively for over twenty years at venues which include Museo Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba; Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, Colombia; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna, Austria; Sheldon Museum of Art, Nebraska; Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London, CT; Ringling Museum, Tampa, FL; Miura Museum of Art, Matsuyama, Japan and Urasoe Museum, Okinawa, Japan. Her work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Fuchu Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan, among many others world wide. Ramos is teacher at The Higher Institute of Art in Havana, Cuba, and a curator since 1996 of Cuban contemporary art exhibitions. She has presented at conferences and workshops in international institutions including: National Gallery of Art in Washington DC; The University of Havana; L' Ecole deux Beaux Arts, Paris; Barbican Center in London; The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Lowe Art Museum, Florida University, Miami and Fuchu Art Museum,Tokyo, Japan.

*Contains excerpts from a new essay on Sandra Ramos by Susana Torruella Leval.