There’s a quiet awe in the way Gaby Pezz speaks about her work — as if each painting is less a product of her hand than a manifestation of forces she has invited in. A Havana-born and based, self-taught artist, Gaby began with close observation of plants and flowers, and in a moment of pandemic isolation, turned to self-portraits. When materials ran scarce, she began making her own paper with cotton fibers released by the pods from the ceiba tree. Sacred to Afro-Cuban, Mayan, and many other peoples and traditions across the Caribbean and Latin America—the Ceiba’s towering trunk is adorned with defensive thorns. Leading up to its bloom, the pods swell and eventually burst, giving birth to clouds of cotton that scatter in every direction. This material revelation pulled her deeper into ancestral terrain: the spiritual and protective powers of plants, the rituals and mythologies preserved in Lydia Cabrera’s El Monte, and the absence of Black people in Cuban art beyond stereotypes of slavery and struggle.

What Gaby has created since is a visual language that is both grounded and fantastical. In her portraits, Black figures appear in flowering fields and dense forests — nature as refuge, as freedom, as the place where the real slips into myth. The wilderness becomes a dimension of survival and transformation, where history and imagination intertwine.

Her upcoming exhibition at FÁBRICA, Remedio para vencer (Remedy to Overcome), expands this practice. Drawing from Cabrera’s glossary of plants and their physical and spiritual uses, Gaby pulls poetic fragments into her paintings, creating scenes where nature becomes protector and remedy. The exhibition opens October 4 and will remain on view throughout the month, accompanied by programming that invites audiences deeper into the worlds she inhabits.

In advance of her show at FÁBRICA in Mexico City, we caught up with Gaby at her own place of refuge: Tarará, a beach community just outside Havana. During the hottest months of the year, she paints there with the sea at her doorstep. Water, as an element, is not always depicted in her paintings, but it is ever-present: in the washes of her watercolor, in the transparency of her layers, and in the fluid rhythm of her practice. For Gaby, water is her roots, her life force — memory made material.

Bella Luna: So, tell me, where are you calling me from right now? What do you see, what do you hear, what surrounds you?
Gaby Pezz: I’m in Tarará, just outside Havana. Right now, I look straight out to the beach — the sea is right in front of me. In the mornings I go for a swim before starting work, and it feels ideal. My studio in Vedado gets unbearably hot, so I leave things there, but actually work here. From my window I see trees — there’s a flamboyán with these amazing red flowers — and on the other side it’s all forest and ocean. I’m completely surrounded by nature.

Bella Luna: For those who don’t know you yet, tell me again — who are you and what do you do?
Gaby Pezz: My name is Gabriela Pezz. I’m thirty years old, and a self-taught artist. I actually studied International Relations, but around twenty-three or twenty-four I realized art was my passion and decided to follow that path. At first, my process was about observing nature — plants, flowers, leaves. Those first years were about training my eyes to see contrast, form, and detail. Nature taught me how to see.

Bella Luna: Do you remember the first time you said to yourself, “I’m an artist”?
Gaby Pezz: It was around twenty-three. I had just finished my degree in International Relations, but I told my parents: I don’t want this. I want to make art. Around that time I met Alejandra González, a young Cuban Visual Artist who encouraged me to do an open studio during the Havana Biennial. In six months, I put together my first show — and sold two pieces. That was the confirmation I needed. From then on, there was no turning back.

Bella Luna: And what about your earliest memories of Cuba?
Gaby Pezz: My grandparents’ house in Santiago de Cuba. They had a huge patio filled with fruit trees — avocados, mangos. Summers there were pure magic. Days meant rivers and mangos; nights meant carnival, music in the streets, dancing, and pan con lechón. It was idyllic, full of family and joy.

Bella Luna: When you paint, what do you listen to?
Gaby Pezz: Mostly Afro-Cuban chants — there’s an album of Celia Cruz and Mercedita Valdés that I love, singing to different orishas with batá drums. It feels like classical music to me, it puts me in a trance. I also listen to salsa — Los Van Van, Irakere — and boleros. Bola de Nieve is a favorite. Music connects me back to Cuba in a very visceral way.

Bella Luna: I  know the pandemic was a pivotal moment for you… how did that shift things for you in 2020?
Gaby Pezz: Lockdown pushed me to move beyond observation. I couldn’t stay still anymore. That’s when I began self-portraits — studying my own anatomy as a way of expression. But another challenge appeared: I couldn’t buy the paper I normally used, since I couldn’t leave Cuba for two years. That’s when I began experimenting with making my own paper, searching for fibers I could work with.

Bella Luna: Tell me about discovering the ceiba as a fiber.
Gaby Pezz: I began experimenting with ceiba cotton. The ceiba is everywhere in Cuba, across the Caribbean and Latin America, and in many places it’s considered sacred. In Afro-Cuban religion, it’s one of the main symbols. People leave offerings at its roots when they make a promise or ask for something — fruits, corn, even animals, depending on the tradition.

When I realized I could use its cotton to make paper, it felt like a revelation. The paper was unlike anything I’d ever seen — it looked almost like a sheet of bronze, but I could paint with watercolor, acrylic, or ink on it. It opened a new material world for me. And it also pulled me back to my own identity. I come from an atheist family where religion was never part of our daily life, yet suddenly I was face to face with this tree that carried so much spiritual weight in my culture.

Bella Luna: And that discovery led you to research Afro-Cuban mythology, right?
Gaby Pezz: Exactly. I started asking myself: how is it possible that this is part of my heritage, my identity, and yet I knew nothing about it? That’s when I found El Monte by Lydia Cabrera. She documented the myths and cosmogonies of Afro-Cuban religion, especially its deep ties to nature. Reading it made me realize how absent this mythology is from Cuban education — we learn Greek mythology in school, even biblical stories, but Afro-Cuban knowledge is left out.

That book opened an entire visual universe for me. The rituals, the plants, the idea that every root, every leaf carries a physical and a spiritual property. That you can heal the body, but also cleanse the soul. And that energy can be used for good or for harm depending on how you direct it. That duality, the material and the spiritual, became central to my work.

Bella Luna: Lydia Cabrera is such a reference for the Afro-diaspora around the world. Tell me more about what El Monte meant for you.
Gaby Pezz: Discovering that book was a turning point. Cabrera herself was born into a wealthy white family in Havana in the early 1900s, but the people who raised her — her nannies, the workers in her home — were Black, some of them directly descended from Africa. From an early age she was taken to toques de santo, immersed in Afro-Cuban ritual life. She realized that most of the people who carried this knowledge couldn’t read or write, so she dedicated herself to documenting it.

El Monte is the result — a collection of myths, cosmologies, oral histories, and plant knowledge transcribed directly from practitioners. It preserves wisdom that might have otherwise been lost. For me, reading it was like opening a door into a whole universe that belonged to me culturally, yet I had been cut off from. It gave me imagery, language, and a sense of belonging that transformed my art.

Bella Luna: How did both these revelations, material and cultural, change your artistic language?
Gaby Pezz: My art shifted completely. I started painting Black figures — portraits that emerged almost on their own. Because of the handmade paper, its textures and imperfections, I didn’t have full control of the brushstrokes. Sometimes I wanted a nose or a mouth one way, and it would come out differently. So these accidents would happen, and I had the feeling that I wasn’t the only one painting. It felt like the faces wanted to manifest themselves. That really moved me. That experience gave me a voice and an intention in my work.

Bella Luna: You’ve spoken about the representation of Black people in Cuban art. What did you notice?
Gaby Pezz: When you go to the National Museum, you see countless portraits of wealthy white Cubans from the 19th and 20th centuries. But when it comes to Black people, the images are mostly slaves, poverty, or hypersexualization. What’s missing are realistic portraits of Black people as teachers, diplomats, professionals, or simply as themselves.

That inspired me to paint my family — like my grandmother, a Black woman who was a diplomat and raised three children through her work and intelligence. In my paintings, I place these figures within nature — flowering fields, forests. Nature becomes a symbol of freedom and refuge, like the cimarrones who escaped slavery and sought shelter in the woods.

Bella Luna: In the last year and a half, what have you been focusing on in your work?
Gaby Pezz: I’ve been inspired by Black figures — representing them in ways that go beyond the usual stereotypes. I often paint them set against nature, as if they’re in flowering fields or forests. Nature remains central in my work, but also becomes a symbol of freedom and refuge.

Bella Luna: Refuge — in what sense?
Gaby Pezz: Because when enslaved people escaped the plantations and became cimarrones, fugitives, they ran to the forest. Entering the forest meant stepping into another dimension. They had to learn which plants they could eat, which ones could heal their wounds, and how to camouflage with the landscape. That survival created a whole visual universe for me — beautiful, powerful, even fantastical.

Bella Luna: And you feel that energy in the paintings themselves?
Gaby Pezz: Absolutely. When you stand in front of the works, you sense that mystical charge. It’s also where mythology begins — stories born from history. In Afro-Cuban mythology, you often hear of people who could transform into birds to fly away in moments of danger, or turn into a flower or a tree. These myths came from real experiences — someone disappeared into the forest, and no one ever heard from them again. So imagination filled the gap: what did they become? That mystery carries into my art.

Bella Luna: Tell me about the new series you’ve been preparing, “Remedy to overcome”.
Gaby Pezz: For this exhibition, I returned to El Monte. At the end of the book there’s a glossary of plants, describing both their physical and spiritual uses. I’ve been underlining phrases that feel poetic to me and then imagining situations around them. One example is the piña de salón — a small ornamental pineapple plant often kept in homes. Cabrera writes that people would bury talismans in its roots so it could bring good luck, prosperity, keep a marriage united, and protect health. She even notes, “No one can suspect the secret, the intelligent and daring force often hidden beneath a beautiful plant.”

That line struck me. I reimagined it as a couple protecting one another, with the pineapple at the center — like they had just planted it, knowing it would safeguard their union. For me, these passages show how nature has always been used as a force of protection and benevolence. Translating that into painting feels very powerful. The piece itself is quite large, and when you stand in front of it, the expressions carry that same sense of beauty and protection.

Bella Luna: You’ve been working mainly on paper for six years. What new materials are you exploring now?
Gaby Pezz: Watercolor on paper has been my world, but recently I started experimenting with oil on canvas. I want to see how my themes evolve with different supports. I’m also curious about silk — working with ink on silk feels like the next frontier, though I haven’t found it in Cuba. Maybe in Mexico.

Watercolor prepared me for this — it taught me contrast, shadow, form. People say watercolor is hard, but for me it was the most natural medium. Pigment, water, intuition. It gave me the confidence to now expand into larger, more demanding materials.

Bella Luna: And what have you learned about yourself through art?
Gaby Pezz: That the limits we feel are mostly in our minds. At first, I only painted small works, afraid to go bigger. Then one day I made a two-meter piece. Now I can’t go back — small feels too confined.

Art also made me reflect deeply on my identity. I lived in New York as a teenager, when my father worked at the UN. Those years disconnected me from Cuba in some ways. Coming back, I had to rediscover what I wanted to do and who I wanted to become. Art gave me a path to reconnect with my heritage and to find purpose.

Bella Luna: What happens when you share your art with the world?

Gaby Pezz: At first you create for yourself, from something that resonates inside. But when you share it, you see how others identify with it. That reaction is powerful — it creates dialogue, connection, even healing. I often feel I paint to fill voids — to create images I didn’t see growing up, so that Afro-Cuban People like me can see themselves represented in the visual history of our country.