Edel Rodriguez

Edel Rodriguez is a Cuban American artist who has exhibited internationally with shows in New York, Chicago, Dallas, Havana, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Toronto, and Spain. Inspired by personal history, religious rituals, politics, memory, and nostalgia, his bold, figurative works are an examination of identity, mortality, and cultural displacement.

Edel Rodriguez was born in Havana, Cuba in 1971. He was raised in El Gabriel, a small farm town surrounded by fields of tobacco and sugar cane. In 1980 Rodriguez and his family boarded a boat and left for America during the Mariel boatlift. They settled in Miami where Rodriguez was introduced to and influenced by American pop culture for the first time. Socialist propaganda and western advertising, island culture and contemporary city life, are all aspects of his life that continue to inform his work.

Rodriguez's artwork is in the collections of a variety of institutions, including the Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C., as well as in numerous private collections. His work has received numerous awards from The Art Director’s Club and The Society of Illustrators in New York City.