Jorge Mayet creates visually and emotionally powerful works with one scope: to evoke the consciousness and dysphoria of a person separated from their homeland. Suspended in midair, his photorealistic floating landscapes and uprooted trees serve as a metaphor for diaspora, questioning the function of homeland. They are able to represent the sense of nostalgia that the artist feels. The limbs of trees and fragments of buildings are pulled apart or seemingly hang as if they were on tenuous threads of roots. The tree becomes Mayet’s vehicle for representing the many ideologies and cultural motifs of his motherland, Cuba. Mayet’s technique expands upon the region’s local craft traditions and honors the mysticism of the Afro-Cuban Yoruba religion, which was proliferated in Latin America by the Atlantic Slave Trade.
His artwork is included in major collections such as The Saatchi Collection, London; Middle East Museum of Modern Art, Dubai; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; The Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Barjeel Foundation, Sharjah; Kumon Collection of Arts, Seoul and White Rabbit, Sydney.