Willy Castellanos: Exodus. Alternate Documents (1994–2024)

Willy Castellanos’ post-documentary practice emerged from the photographic record he made in Havana, Cuba, during the 1994 Rafter Crisis. Despite the scarcity of 35mm film in the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Castellanos photographed complete sequences of events that included the construction of the rafts, farewell rituals, and scenes of crowds launching into the sea. Between August and September 1994, over 35,000 Cubans embarked toward the United States on hand-built rafts in what became one of the most dramatic exoduses in contemporary history.

A decade ago, the exhibition Exodus: Alternate Documents (2014) at the Centro Cultural Español Miami expanded the narrative and conceptual boundaries of the initial photographic body of work. Protagonists of the exodus, now residing in Miami, contributed their testimonies and photographs of departure preparations or their stay at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Castellanos also located and filmed several of the people he had portrayed 20 years earlier and created installations like Wet Feet Dry Feet (2014), where he incorporated sounds of the departures into fragmented images of the sea. On the 30th anniversary of the Rafter Exodus, this exhibition unveils new pieces and artistic installations, as well as documents collected in the 2014 edition. Today the exodus continues as hundreds of thousands make the journey to cross the Southern border.

Curators: Willy Castellanos and Adriana Herrera at Aluna Curatorial Collective