Rafael Villares (b.1989) is a Cuban-born contemporary artist and educator who works across various media, including sculpture, installation, photography, drawing, and painting. Through researching the history of the Natural and Social Sciences, Villares’ practice centers around an exploration of landscape, with...
Read MoreRafael Villares (b.1989) is a Cuban-born contemporary artist and educator who works across various media, including sculpture, installation, photography, drawing, and painting. Through researching the history of the Natural and Social Sciences, Villares’ practice centers around an exploration of landscape, with the aim of highlighting the ways in which art and science intersect to shape and transform our understandings and perceptions of Nature. Villares often collaborates with scientists, researchers, and others across various disciplines to develop projects that challenge established ways of seeing.
Villares has exhibited extensively both in the USA and internationally, including the 59th Venice Biennale, the Havana Biennial in Cuba, the Vancouver Biennial in Vancouver, Canada the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison, Wisconsin, the Museo Nacional de Arte (MNA) in Bolivia, and the Sixty-eight Art Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark. He has also been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center and at Residency Unlimited in New York, in the USA.
His works are in permanent collections such as the Jose Luis Cuevas Museum in Mexico, the Minneapolis Art Institute (MIA), the Chazen Museum of Art in Wisconsin, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, USA.
Rafael holds a BFA from the Higher Institute of Art (ISA) in Havana, Cuba, and an MFA from Yale University School of Art in New Haven, USA. He was appointed Assistant Professor and Area Head in Sculpture at Michigan State University in July 2024. He currently works between Havana, Cuba, and Okemos, MI.
