Sofá Provisional

Ernesto Oroza

20 August 1995

Project

Ernesto Oroza designed this seat for the 1996 exhibition, Agua con Azúcar. The object shares its characteristics with the thousands of other objects that could be found in Cuba throughout the 1990s. Ernesto Oroza was interested in reconsidering the notion of raw material and swapping it for that of “object- material.” In other words, existing objects were treated as his raw material, a trait also found in the solutions and provisional objects of that characterize period. The “parts” that integrate these objects seem ready to return to their original functions. Along with providing a productive strategy, the alibi of “the provisional” projected the belief that Cubans shared in the transitory nature of the economic and political crisis that befell the Island with the disappearance of Socialist Europe. The Sofá provisional is a precursor to the Objetos de necesidad.