Through “No Tengan Miedo” the artist explores the impact of Pope John Paul II’s historic visit to Cuba on the third anniversary of his trip. The exhibit contains paintings created immediately after the artist’s first travel to the island–an 8-hour charter trip to hear the Pope’s Mass, and those created thereafter. These works include some recent conceptual pieces—the first ever exhibited by Cortada.

Cortada explores the Pope’s impact at the societal and personal level—having traveled to the Vatican in February 2000 to meet the Pope and participate in the Jubilee for Artists, and then having returned to Cuba for the second time two months later to meet family and attend a packed Sunday Mass in the family hometown of Nuevitas, Camaguey.