Born of Cuban immigrant parents, Elliot and Erick Jiménez grew up with a strong cultural heritage. Between stories, legends, saints, and divinities, these brothers have succeeded, over the years, in retranscribing, through their photographic work, the cultural diversity and their Cuban-American upbringing, mixing both spiritual worlds and history.
Passionate about art history and historical paintings, this creative duo is inspired by mythological, Catholic, and Yoruba elements, an ideology entangled within the culture and spiritual experience of many Cubans.
Over the years, they have managed to develop strong images whose influences derive from a theological education, the supernatural, and the divinity of the gods. A work that invites the eye to travel in a little-known story of Latin America with a certain romantic vulnerability, where the composition of colors is omnipresent and thoughtful.
Elliot and Erick translate mysticism and darkness through anonymous and faceless figures for portraits. Their work on still life is reminiscent of offerings to deities, not to mention landscapes and fashion, and has been published in magazines such as Vogue, Allure, and Highsnobiety.
This infusion of the past is transcribed in their new project: “Entre Dos Mundos” (meaning “Between Two Worlds” in English), which is the personification of deities and saints made possible with the combination of two ideologies, initially incompatible: Catholicism and Santeria (or Lucumi), then detecting points of convergence and divergence within these two distinct spiritual worlds.
Currently, the twins, represented by the Miami-based art gallery Spinello Project, travel the world and hold regular exhibitions. Recently, they set down their frames and luggage in the heart of the French capital during the last edition of Paris Photo.
An artistic work offering a contemporary and modernist dive in a certain time, where spiritual worlds fill with delicacy, softness but especially contrasts, for an escape in time and space that will not leave you indifferent…
Portugal
Thomas Durin