Since the early 1990s, René Peña has used the nude male body,
often his own, to address issues of sexuality, machismo, spirituality, and his
role as an Afro-Cuban man in society. The simply composed close-ups of his Rites series translate rituals and icons
into a personal, erotic system of meaning. Animal motifs imitate religious
sacrifices as they speak to a time in Cuba when the private breeding of small
animals was legalized to counter the island’s food crisis.