Linet Sánchez

"I still have two memories. My personal one

and that of the other I am partly.

Or rather, two memories have me.

There is an area where they are confused."

—Jorge Luis Borges, The memory of Shakespeare

Thomas Nickles Project is pleased to present the first NYC solo exhibition of Cuban artist Linet Sánchez; I Remember This Room is designed as an in-depth journey into the artist's mind and juxtaposes work developed between 2013 and 2021, the span of her career. Sánchez, who was trained as a painter and a ballerina before becoming a photographer, has developed her voice through the search of her own story, focusing on the relationship between memory, architecture, and images.

In her earlier works, Sánchez excavates her own psyche in cinematic vignettes of deserted rooms and winding staircases that lead only to the unknown. The artist understands this series of large-scale photographs as compilations of her remembered experiences. As the exhibition continues, works from her latest series, including a single-channel video, depict her memories as mysterious stand-alone crates, offering no indication of their contents, and embodying the memories that Sanchez is unable to access. The artist’s use of fictional miniature spaces, presented as actual objects and “real” places, invokes a theme of “the unreliable narrator” and reveals the past as something constructed or modeled, rather than an absolute. The artist thus reveals herself as someone constantly questioning what to remember — and how to remember — thereby treating her own history as a kind of arbitrary fact.

Linet Sánchez (b. 1989 in Santa Clara, Cuba) graduated from the University of the Arts (ISA) in Havana in 2013. Her work has been exhibited at CC Mechelen, Belgium (2022); Foto Museo Cuatro Caminos, Mexico City, Mexico (2017); The Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles, United States (2017); Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam, Havana, Cuba (2016), among other venues. Awards include the Latin American Contemporary Photography Award, Monterrey, Mexico (Second Prize, 2018); FotoFest Scholarship, Houston, Texas (2018); and Post-it, Havana (First Prize, 2015). Sánchez has been an artist-in-residence at: El Espacio 23 in Miami, FL; Flora ars+natura Residency (in collaboration with Artista x Artista) in Bogotá, Colombia (2018); and Havana Culture Residency (3rd Edition) by Havana Club International (2013), among others. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections in the Americas. The artist lives and works in Havana, Cuba.