Cuban artist Dagoberto Rodríguez’ work is housed in collections as far reaching as the Tate Modern, MoMA and the Guggenheim, to name just a few. Now his first solo exhibition is heading to Luxembourg through two unique sites, with installations that invite audiences to question how technology and information shapes our world and perspectives.
Born in Caibarién on Cuba’s northern coast in 1969, Dagoberto Rodríguez studied at Havana’s Instituto Superior de Arte before co-founding the celebrated Los Carpinteros collective in 1992. Though the group dissolved in 2018, he continued his multidisciplinary practice from Madrid, working across various media.
Having grown up under a political regime that deeply influenced his understanding of propaganda, access to information and the consequences of ideological conformity, Rodríguez’ interest in systems of control has been inseparable from what he experienced in his home country. During a recent interview with Forbes Luxembourg, Rodríguez recalled how his father had been, like many of his generation, deeply committed to the communist cause. “He dedicated his life to the Cuban Revolution—whatever the Revolution needed from them, and it ended in total deception,” he recalled. His father eventually became disillusioned with the project to which he had devoted so much of his life.
As a student, Rodríguez was amongst other students who knew a change needed to happen. “I’m not a political activist because I’m focusing on my art, but my art is also full of political ideas,” Rodríguez said. “From the art, we did as much as we could to change things in Cuba, or at least to create an opinion and to clarify to the younger generation that the project was a failure and needed to be erased from the Earth.”
Even now, he considers his mission set up in “poetic stages”, his practice a kind of “poetic activism”.
An exhibition across two unique spaces
Running 24 October through 29 November 2026, his first Luxembourg solo exhibition is based in two locations: ‘Al Kierch’, the former church of Roodt-sur-Syre, and the Annexes of Château de Bourglinster. Curated by Emanuela Mazzonis, Broadcasting the Unknown brings together the communes of Junglinster and Betzdorf in an unprecedented collaboration.
In ‘Al Kierch’, a once sacred space becomes a new place for devotion, this time to great writers and thinkers that influenced Rodríguez, such as Mario Vargas Llosa, Simone de Beauvoir and Franz Kafka, whose names feature on weight plates. Titled El gimnasio del pensamiento (The Gymnasium of Thought), this exhibition includes a full-scale gym, equipped with weight plates—which are also featured in watercolours alongside the installation—bearing these thinkers’ names.
For Rodriguez, it’s about playfully challenging society’s fixation on physical fitness at the expense of intellectual exercise. “We don’t count the number of mental calories that we need, the books that we need to read to be able to sustain a conversation,” he explained.
At the Annexes of Château de Bourglinster, the focus shifts from intellectual nourishment to technological dependence. Terracotta satellites, paintings, and videos explore the systems through which images and ideas travel, and the power structures embedded within them. Here the use of clay, a basic but ancient material, as the substance of contemporary satellites creates a juxtaposition that seems to make digital life tangible, prompting questions about who controls the networks that shape our understanding of reality. As the artist put it, “I think we live in a world where information is everything. Maybe we have too much information. Now we’re confused about what to read, what to listen to, even if it’s important to be informed.”
At the time of writing, Rodríguez was looking forward to his first trip to Luxembourg. “For me, it’s an attractive place to show [these works] because I have this idea from the 1990s that Luxembourg is one of the places that’s emblematic of the European Union, a place where democracy works very well,” he said. “I’m curious about showing my work there, since my work reflects on society. Coming from a place like Cuba, where we were living under a dictatorship for so many years, it’s important to show my work in places like Luxembourg.”
The artist will help kick off the exhibition but will also return for Luxembourg Art Week on 20-22 November 2026, as Rodriguez’ sculptures will be shown on the Lëtzebuerg City Museum’s terrace. The works are inspired by toy building bricks that Rodriguez didn’t have as a child growing up in Cuba, but “I’m getting so much joy as an adult playing with them!”
For more information
The exhibition opens at 11am on Saturday, 24 October, in the presence of the artist at ‘Al Kierch’, then at the Annexes of Château de Bourglinster. General opening hours to explore the works are Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, 1am-7pm, from 24 October through 29 November.
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