Biography
Nestor Siré (b. 1988, Camagüey) is a Cuban multimedia artist, currently based in Amsterdam at the Rijkscademie, whose trans-disciplinary research probes how technological infrastructures shape—and are shaped by—everyday social life. Drawing on anthropology, network studies and critical media theory, he translates the informal circuits and vernacular hacks of the Global South into interactive installations, digital platforms and site-specific interventions. These works reveal competing social imaginaries of “creativity,” articulating a parallel narrative of resistance in which grassroots modes of cultural production and circulation emerge as community-driven alternatives to dominant techno-economic paradigms.
Siré’s projects have been shown at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Havana); Queens Museum, Rhizome and the New Museum (New York); SeMA (Seoul); Hong-Gah Museum (Taipei); Moesgaard Museum (Denmark); The Photographers’ Gallery (London); and MUAC—Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (Mexico City), among others. He has also presented his work at major international events such as the 16th and 14th Havana Biennials (Cuba, 2024 & 2015), AMRO24 Biennial (Austria, 2024), The Wrong Biennale (online, 2023), the II Warsaw Biennial (Poland, 2022), the 12th Gwangju Biennale (South Korea, 2018), the Curitiba Biennial (Brazil, 2017) and the Asunción International Biennale (Paraguay, 2016). His practice has further featured at Transmediale, Ars Electronica, Re:Publica × Reeperbahn Festival, Cuba’s Festival of New Latin American Cinema and the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival (Germany).
Among his distinctions are the 3Arts & Andy Warhol Foundation Ignite Fund Grant (2023), Cuba’s National Curated Awards of Group Exhibitions (2019), the Media Arts Assistance Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts (2018) and the Visa pour la Création prize from l’Institut Français (2016).
Siré has undertaken residencies at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (Netherlands), TOKAS—Tokyo Arts and Space (Japan), Fountainhead Arts (USA), the Camargo Foundation and Dos Mares (France), the Ludwig Foundation of Cuba and LASA (Cuba), among others. He currently lives and works between Havana and a constellation of itinerant research contexts.