“Museum of Unborn Memories” is an exhibition of works by visiting international artist, Naya A. Mauricio, opening in the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Cultural Arts Building (CAB) Art Gallery on September 25, 2025. The exhibition will run through Wednesday, October 29, 2025.

A public reception will be held on Thursday, September 25, 2025 from 5:30 p.m. – 7 p.m., with an artist talk before the reception at 5 p.m. in UNCW's Cultural Arts Building, Room 2033.

Naya A. Mauricio is Cuban artist living in Ecuador. On view will be close to 70 small format oil paintings on paper, traveled by way of his carry-on and checked luggage.

Gallery hours are Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. with extended hours on Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The CAB Art Gallery is located in the UNCW Cultural Arts Building, 5270 Randall Drive, Wilmington, NC 28403 - UNCW’s campus on the ground floor of the Cultural Arts Building, near the building's main entrance. Visitors can access the gallery from South College Road or Racine Drive, and parking is available in front of the box office entrance to the building.

For more information visit https://linktr.ee/cabartgallery

Artist Statement
“Our memories are imprecise and changing; they depend on our recall and reinterpretation. All human beings carry out the creative work of reconstructing what we believe to be our invariable memories. We are, to a greater or lesser extent, authors of our memories. We use the rawmaterial of the small, imprecise notes our brain takes at every moment of our lives, and we reconstruct scenes with the help of our own memories of other events, our collective memories, or the memories left to us by the experience of contemplating various forms of art (film,
literature, music, visual arts, performing arts). In this, we are no different from a fiction writer.

In the "Museum of Unborn Memories" exhibition, I propose to reconstruct this fragmentary process of recreating memories. That is why the word "unborn" is used in the title, because it is precisely the process, not the final image, that is portrayed in the works. This process resembles the syncretism with which all cultures are constructed. A transculturation process where borders disappear and identity is not something fixed but rather is shaped at every moment. The decision to paint isolated elements, without a background, attempts to recreate the experience we have when visiting an archaeological museum, where we encounter mysterious fragments of a largely unknown past. The exhibition should be perceived as a large installation where each element is a mysterious fragment of a past that never existed.

Of course, there are autobiographical elements in this exhibition. For example, the experience of being born in the Caribbean, of having lived most of my life as an immigrant, of having lost almost my entire family, among others. But those memories have been reworked until they become something that no longer belongs to me.
Speaking about my work in a more general way: almost unconsciously, all my life I have been building a personal bestiary in which the human being plays a predominant role.”

Biography
Born in Havana, Cuba, 1975.
Graduated from Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas San Alejandro, Cuba, 1994.

CV
Collective and Individual Exhibitions:
2019 “Bêtes”, Alliance française. Quito, Ecuador.
2015 "You can only be saved...", Individual Exhibition, ACME Art Studio, Wilmington, North
Carolina, USA
2015 Asolare Fine Arts Foundation, Lexington, North Carolina, USA
2015 Museum-Gallery ISS, Group Exhibition, Penza, Russia
2014 "Similar to the night", Individual Exhibition, University Wilmington, North Carolina, USA
2014 No Boundaries International Art Colony, Bald Head Island, North Carolina, USA
2014 Festival of Contemporary Art, Voronezh, Russia
2014 International Science, Culture and Art Days, Konya, Turkey
2013 International Sculpture Symposium, Penza, Russia, Second place in the painting
competition
2013 Museum-Gallery ISS, Group Exhibition Penza, Russia
2012 Luxor International Painting Symposium, Egypt
2012 "Diuturnidad", Individual Exhibition, Asociación Cultural Mariano Suárez del Villar,
Valencia, Spain
Art Residencies:
2015 ACME Art Studio, Wilmington, North Carolina, USA
2015 Asolare Fine Arts Foundation, Lexington, North Carolina, USA
Additional Collections and Exhibitions:
City Museum, Quito, Ecuador
"Antropozoo", Individual Exhibition, House of Equatorian Culture, Quito, Ecuador
Casa de las Américas, Havana, Cuba
Museo del Castillo de la Real Fuerza, Havana, Cuba
Casa de México, Havana, Cuba
Salón Internacional de Pequeño Formato, Cuba
International Book Fair (Pabexpo), Havana, Cuba
Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas San Alejandro, Havana, Cuba
First Place, First International Salon of Small Format, Cuba