AMERICAN. Lives and works in Miami.
PROBABLY THE MOST EXTREME DECONSTRUCTION OF THE HUMAN FORM IN ART HISTORY
CREDITED FOR INVENTING A NEW TYPE OF PORTRAIT: THE MOLECULAR PORTRAIT
MADE POSSIBLE BY A TECHNOLOGY HE CO-INVENTED DECADES IN DEVELOPMENT, WHICH WAS RECENTLY PUBLISHED ON THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CHEMISTRY JOURNAL.
THE SCIENCE CAN BE UNDERSTOOD AS A NEW PARADIGM FOR LOOKING AT OURSELVES, AND THE WORLD AROUND US, MERGING MOLECULAR DATA WITH AI FOR THE BENEFIT OF HUMANITY.
Dr. Obdulio Piloto’s unique visual language expresses the unity of our common humanity regardless of race, gender, sexuality, or nationality.
This bold new paradigm has the power to transform what we know about not only ourselves, but also humanity as a whole.
“HOW DIFFICULT IT IS TO SEE OURSELVES AS OTHERS DO.
MOODS, CIRCUMSTANCES, TIME OF DAY, BIASES, ENVY AND OTHER FACTORS COLOR OUR PERCEPTIONS.
ALL VERSIONS OF YOU DEPICTED IN THE “LOOKING GLASS SELF” ARE IN FACT FRAGMENTS OF SELF, YET WHEN COMBINED, DO NOT FULLY CAPTURE ‘YOU’.
WE ARE INCAPABLE OF FULLY EXPOSING OURSELVES AND KEEP SELECT PARTS HIDDEN, EVEN FROM OUR CONSCIOUSNESS.
TO MAKE THINGS EVEN MORE INTERESTING, THE OBJECTIVE SELF, IF SUCH A THING EVEN EXISTS, IS ALWAYS IN A DYNAMIC STATE THROUGHOUT OUR EXISTENCE.” – OBDULIO PILOTO
BIO
Dr. Obdulio Piloto (b. 1978) is an American artist-scientist-inventor known for pioneering the Molecular Portrait as a visual language to explore themes of human identity, particularly the essence of humanity.
Born and raised in a traditional Cuban family in Hialeah, Florida – humble beginnings exposed him to the realities of human challenges. Losing his great-grandmother to cancer at the age of 8, initiated his interest in the sciences and urged his lifelong mission to find solutions for one of the world’s most devastating diseases. His natural brilliance and determination earned him a place at Cornell University, he obtained a Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University Medical School and pursued post-graduate research at Stanford University.
Both art and science play a symbiotic role in his practice. His artworks depict people as deconstructed mixtures of molecules in a 70-spot molecular portrait; an avant-garde series of works that reimagine our entire humanity by reminding us of the interconnectedness of all things, of our place in the universe, and the need of unleashing humanity’s full potential to create a more hopeful future.
Through this visual language, he explores technological displacement as automation, gene editing, artificial intelligence, and extreme wealth inequality take shape in our society, probing the vulnerabilities of the existential human condition.
His work is often political, creating a dialogue between the technological and ideological differences between the East and West and their quest for technological supremacy, and is highly critical of American mainstream culture. His work always revisits the influence of science throughout history and creates parallels that challenge new forms of remembering the past, as he hopes to inspire new ways of imagining the future. He strongly believes the future does not exist, and it is up to us to create it.