Tomás Esson Reid is one of the most significant artists to have emerged in Cuba during the 1980s. Creator of provocative works, and something of a controversial figure himself in the Cuban context, Esson participated, along with Carlos Cárdenas and Glexis Novoa, in the exhibition Patria o Muerte (Fatherland or Death), presented at Havana’s Castillo de la Fuerza in 1989. Like them, he chose to emigrate in the early 1990s.