La última cena, díptico II [The Last Supper, diptych II]

For several years, Toirac has been investigating and deconstructing Cuba’s official media images. He has a fascination with repurposing and reclamation of popular media images. La última cena, diptico II (2000) is a still from a documentary about Fidel Castro’s visit to the United States in 1959. The dinner in this image is in a poor neighborhood at the Hotel Teresa. By blurring the precise photorealism in the second panel, the artist confuses the apparently stable documentary nature of the image and reclaims for painting the ability to produce a less black-and-white version of how history is told through images.