Kcho (Alexis Leyva Machado)

In his work Kcho engages with the politics and living conditions in Cuba, playing with the notion of a socialist utopia in a Communist country. This drawing demonstrates Kcho's ability to reimagine nonfunctional architecture—in this case the Russian avant-garde artist Vladimir Tatlin's Monument to the Third International of 1919–20—as an effective utilitarian machine. A cone-shaped coffee filter sits at the top of a curvilinear structure of intertwined twigs and wires; to the left is a detail drawing of the mesh filter with coffee grounds in it. With written descriptions Kcho reiterates the materials to be used for transforming what he has called a "utopian socialist symbol that doesn't work" into a functional device—a drip coffeemaker. The drawing relates to a sculpture of the same title that Kcho made in 1992 from found materials—driftwood and twine with a coffee filter on top — from his native island. Like the drawing, it was made during Cuba’s "Special Period," a time of severe economic crisis after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the onset of the United States–enforced economic embargo.