Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara: Tocar el cielo

At first, they look like little rooms. Drawn in oil pastel and graphite, two by three feet. Bunk beds with sheets the green of Astroturf. Windows shot through with bars. Then, you realize these are prison cells, and each one is the same.

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara made these drawings in Guanajay, a maximum-security prison in Cuba. A place where everything is controlled, including where your body can go, he began drawing places only his mind could visit.

A man throws rocks toward a swan in a swimming pool. In another, a lonely cross hangs on a wall. Elsewhere, a pile of santos” little clay figures of the Virgin Mary, Jesus, saints, and angels.

Where are you, Jesus, in all of this? And where are the saints when you need them?

The men in the pictures have bruised, distorted faces. Not from the aftermath of a fight, but from feelings inside them that can’t be seen, so it has to be drawn. One wears a clown nose. Which is funny, until it isn’t.

Then there’s a purple toy train on a track spiraling upwards. It looks a little like the rattlesnake on the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag. A warning against tyranny. Except here the snake is a toy. And the track leads to nowhere.

You can go around and around. You can imagine you’re going somewhere. But instead, you find yourself trapped in the same room.

The grief takes less than thirty seconds to hit. And then it’s everywhere. And you’re there with it.

Except you can leave, and the men in the drawings couldn’t.

Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara (b. 1987, Havana) is a Cuban artist, activist, and co-founder of the San Isidro Movement, which challenges restrictions on artistic freedom.

Arrested on his way to a protest in 2021, he spent five years in prison, where he began drawing to mark time and imagine life beyond his cell.

Named one of TIME's 100 most influential people in 2021 and awarded the Prince Claus Impact Award in 2022, he was released in July 2026 and forced into exile in the United States.