El Apartamento becomes the first Cuba-based gallery to show at Art Basel Miami Beach

One of the highlights of the 23rd edition of Art Basel Miami Beach, taking place from December 5 to 7, is the first-time participation of a Cuba-based gallery: El Apartamento. This marks a milestone, given the political, economic, logistical, and historical barriers it has faced, as well as the long-standing tensions between Miami and Havana.

For the gallery’s founder, Christian Gundin, participating in a fair of the magnitude of Art Basel Miami Beach, the most important in the Americas, just a decade after launching the project, is a great honor and recognition of all of his work. “I’ve been lucky, but at the same time, I haven’t stopped working for the last 10 years. It’s been a real adventure full of ups and downs, a rollercoaster of emotions and disappointments, with a lot of financial stress,” he explains.

Gundin, 45, born in Havana, divides his time between the Cuban capital, Miami, and Madrid. It is precisely this persistence that has contributed to the gallery’s survival and subsequent expansion. For now, El Apartamento doesn’t seem to have been affected by the sharp decline in sales in the contemporary art market, which have fallen 12% compared to last year, according to a report by Art Basel and UBS.

In recent fairs, the gallery has performed very well, from The Armory Show in New York to the most recent Frieze in London, where it sold all its works. “Crises are cyclical. Costs have risen a lot, and not necessarily because sales have increased; but I always arrive at the show optimistic, and attitude is important,” Gundin points out.

It is still unclear whether El Apartamento will pave the way for other galleries to enter the international market, or if it is an exception resulting from a unique combination of factors. Currently, there are other cultural projects in Havana, such as Estudio Figueroa-Vives or the recently created Cemí space, but the survival of art galleries in Cuba is difficult, given the country’s precarious situation — “There is no fuel, no electricity, there are epidemics, hunger...” — and artists depend on a foreign market.

Gundin says that since he started his journey with El Apartamento, he has never had issues with customs, as art shipments are protected by law, but he acknowledges that logistics remain complicated: shipping companies are very limited, and sometimes works must first be sent to Europe and then brought to the United States.

El Apartamento was founded in 2015, during the flourishing of the Cuban cultural scene under Barack Obama, the first U.S. president to visit Cuba in 90 years. Obama promoted a thaw in diplomatic relations, achieving the closest U.S. approach to Cuba since the 1959 Revolution. This opening led to the creation of numerous cultural projects that benefited from the influx of tourist and visits from art curators. The momentum slowed with Donald Trump’s rise to power, and especially with the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We survived thanks to the support of collector friends. A key person who helped us tremendously during the pandemic was Jorge Pérez [a businessman and philanthropist, whose donations led to the Miami Art Museum being renamed Pérez Art Museum Miami],” says Gundin, who argues that the pandemic triggered one of the largest migrations of Cuban artists he has ever witnessed. Currently, he says, only five or six artists remain in Havana.

It was then that he began to consider expanding El Apartamento to other cities, and ultimately opted for Spain, taking advantage of his father’s citizenship. Since 2023, the gallery has also opened a location in Madrid.

Cuban contemporary art is reaffirming its place in the international canon, as seen in exhibitions such as When I Don’t Sleep, I Dream, the MoMA retrospective on Wifredo Lam, and his previous shows at the Centre Pompidou in France, Madrid’s Museo Reina Sofía, and the Tate in London.

In this context, El Apartamento aims to foster dialogue between Cuban artists and peers from other regions. For its first appearance at Art Basel Miami Beach, the gallery is presenting five artists: four Cubans — Ariamna Contino, Roberto Diago, Diana Fonseca, and Orestes Hernández — and the Spaniard Miki Leal. Gundin plans to expand the gallery’s roster to include artists from Europe, Latin America, and the U.S. “I don’t want the gallery to be pigeonholed as a space for Cuban art, but rather for contemporary art,” he says, noting that he has strived to maintain a diverse approach to enrich the program and that, in addition to paintings, it encompasses different disciplines, including sculptures, photographs, and installations.

In February, El Apartamento will participate in Frieze Los Angeles, a highly exclusive fair that features a limited number of galleries, where it will showcase the work of Miki Leal. But for now, all attention is on its debut at Art Basel Miami Beach, known as the most speculative fair on the international calendar, which may be tested by a cautious contemporary art market in times of great uncertainty.

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