P•P•O•W presents for the first time an exhibition dedicated to the landmark work of Manuel Pardo (1952–2012), a Cuban-American figurative painter whose practice was deeply influenced by Latinx visual culture, shaped by his gay identity, and sustained by a constant homage to his mother, whom he portrayed as a heroic and glamorous icon. This exhibition also marks his first presentation in New York in over fifteen years.
The exhibition brings together works from various series within Pardo's output but finds its central focus in Stardust (2003–2012), a collection of drawings notable for their remarkable visual complexity. In this series, the artist deploys a meticulous and vibrant aesthetic language, where each stroke reveals an obsessive dedication to detail.
These works, executed exclusively with a Gelly Roll Stardust pen on handmade paper, emerged as an alternative to oil painting, a technique Pardo was forced to abandon due to the worsening of his asthma. The artist and his partner lived very close to the Twin Towers during the September 11 attacks, and prolonged exposure to dust from the debris caused irreversible lung damage. As a result, he could no longer use conventional paints and chose to work solely on paper.
Born in Havana, Manuel Pardo was one of more than 14,000 children who left Cuba during the so-called "Operation Peter Pan," an unauthorized migration organized by the U.S. government and the Catholic Church, the largest child exodus in the history of the Western Hemisphere.
In 1962, at the age of ten, Pardo arrived in the United States with his older sister. They lived with foster families, an experience he endured with great suffering, until, in 1966, his mother was able to join them. That reunion would forever mark his life; years later, the artist would recall it by saying, "God arrived, in the form of a woman with a very long braid."
Their mother, Gladys, had decided not to cut her hair until she could be reunited with her children. And so it was: when she finally arrived in the United States, she wore a very long braid that symbolized the four years of waiting. As soon as she arrived, she took Manuel out of the foster care system and settled with him and his sister in Tarrytown, New York, where she found work in the nearest factory. In Cuba, Gladys had worked as a doctor but gave it all up for her children. Because of this, Manuel wanted to give her everything he could have in his new home.
Pardo saw his work as an act of gratitude and reparation to her mother. “In a heroic act of self-denial,” she stated, “[my mother] forgot she was a woman in her thirties, and became a factory worker working 16 hours a day to make ends meet… I wanted to thank Gladys, and this is what I came up with: a work in which I give her everything she didn’t have in real life: elaborate hairstyles, elegant designer dresses, and lavish settings, all set in the era when she would have enjoyed it.”
Gladys died in 1999, and it was then that Manuel Pardo, switching his artistic medium to drawing on paper, decided to pay her a definitive tribute: filling the image of his mother with all the comforts, luxuries, and fantasies she hadn't been able to enjoy in life. His depiction was deliberately stylized: faces with extremely arched eyebrows, eyelids painted in bright colors and enhanced with glitter from pens, and dresses laden with glamour.
These figures inhabit exuberant settings, marked by a florid and almost theatrical decorativeness: multi-patterned wallpaper, curtains as backdrops, ornamental urns, the flowers Gladys used to grow, and landscapes that evoke the artist's native Cuba.
Each drawing functions as a tribute not only to his mother, but also to femininity and its potential to raise awareness. The women who inhabit his work seem to embody a maternal figure invested with the responsibility of nurturing. In several of his drawings, these figures wear accessories decorated with explicit images: female mouths performing oral sex on a condom-covered penis. This series, titled Trust, underscores the ethical, preventive, and affective dimension of this gesture.
Motivated by the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s—which he himself survived—Pardo wanted to convey an urgent, countercultural message: that women should also get tested for HIV, in a context where few spoke about having been infected by husbands who were secretly involved in homosexual relationships. His message was clear: “No matter who you are, you should get tested,” but it also carried a broader, more hopeful affirmation: “You are in control of your life and you can achieve any level of greatness you desire.”
But the central focus of the exhibition is undoubtedly femininity, understood as a hallmark of identity that becomes a tool of empowerment, an act of resistance, and a form of protection.
Manuel Pardo cultivated this idea for several reasons. On the one hand, as a gesture of love and a tribute to his mother's memory; on the other, as a proudly gay man who found in femininity—and in those who performed, transgressed, or reinvented it—a form of everyday resistance.
Throughout his life, he maintained a close connection with New York's trans and drag queen community. After graduating from the School of Visual Arts in 1978, he worked at the makeup counter at Saks Fifth Avenue. At night, she would head uptown to a club called La Bonita, where he did makeup for drag queens before their performances.
Later, he even worked as a taxi driver, taking them to the docks to begin their shifts. Over time, this daily, caring dedication turned him into a beloved figure within the community: a kind of godfather or protector for many of them.
Hence, the focal point of the exhibition is a beautiful self-portrait in which the artist represents himself through his alter ego, Androgena, made up in drag queen style. This performative image of identity also symbolizes a significant stage in his life: one marked by unconditional support for his community and a staunch stance of resistance to a moralistic society, as well as to a government that forbade him from returning to his native country, whose vague memories he evokes in his work.
For example, in his 1990s series entitled Metaplasma, blue and yellow tones predominate, a palette reminiscent of the walls of the hair salon he frequented with his mother as a child. After graduating in 1978, Pardo was drawn to pop culture and the exuberant aesthetics of Pedro Almodóvar's cinema. Although the director is not Cuban, his Hispanic sensibility left a notable mark on the Latino cultural context in the United States and resonated strongly in the artist's imagination.
The use of vibrant colors in his work stems from this combination of personal memories and visual references. Memories of his childhood on the island—especially visits to the beauty salon with his mother—the glamorous women who visited there every week, and the dazzling dresses of the 1960s emerge strongly in his work as essential elements of a deeply personal visual language.
The exhibition brings together works that span different stages of Manuel Pardo's career: from his early portraits, in which he explores gender expression and the sense of self, to his later series, such as Mother and I in Technicolor and Stardust. Drawings and paintings that display a singular style, where glamour, vulgarity, and femininity are markers of strength, resilience, and power.
A selection that invites the viewer to immerse themselves in an intimate and exuberantly ornate universe, where the decorative becomes a tool for reflection on identity, beauty, and the power of self-affirmation.