In “Elio Rodríguez: Of Joint Ventures and Sexual Adventures,” Sujatha Fernándes, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Queens College, City University of New York, writes, “The Ceiba tree is sacred within Afro-Cuban religions. By presenting it in the form of a bulbous and protruding sculpture, sometimes even phallic, Rodríguez is reviving a sense of the bodily and physical presence of black Cuba. Given the trajectory of his Cuba-based body of work ranging from commentary on racial stereotypes to mixed marriages and sex tourism, it is not surprising that outside of
Cuba he would have more space to ponder the nature of blackness as a submerged and often maligned category of subjectivity.”