José Toirac (b. 1966, Guantánamo, Cuba) is a Cuban artist whose work observes and dismantles historical and political processes. He graduated from the San Alejandro Academy in Havana in 1985 and from the Superior Institute of Art in 1990. Drawing on documents and images from public sources, such as official newspapers and magazines that had already passed state censorship, as well as Cuban national records and archives, he exposes the silences of official history and the ways history is manipulated to reinforce a given idea. His work was included in "The American Effect" at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2003, and his project "Orbis: Tribute to Walker Evans," made with Meira Marrero, was shown at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana in 2007. His work is held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Ludwig Forum in Aachen. He received Cuba's National Prize of Plastic Arts.
