Hybrid of a Chrysler (version with passport)
Tampa Museum of Art
June 2024 - December, 2027
Cuban artist Esterio Segura’s monumental sculpture Hybrid of a Chrysler is on view in the Tampa Museum of Art’s outdoor gallery. On display there since June 2024, the work has quickly become a landmark attraction for museum visitors and the Tampa community.
Born in Santiago de Cuba and trained at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana, Segura is internationally recognized for artworks that explore the complexities of daily life in Cuba. His practice frequently incorporates winged animals and machines—airplanes, submarines, and fantastical hybrids—that grapple with themes of freedom, isolation, migration, desire, and exile.
Hybrid of a Chrysler exemplifies this unique approach. The sculpture features airplane wings attached to the roof of a 1953 Chrysler Windsor, evoking the classic cars still seen on Cuban streets. Poised for flight, the vehicle becomes a metaphor for longing, mobility, and escape.
Known as the Version with Passport, this edition of the sculpture premiered at the Tampa Museum of Art in 2016 and has since traveled internationally to Venice, Washington, D.C., Gainesville, and Miami before returning to Tampa.
The work was most recently featured in Under the Spell of the Palm Tree: The Rice Collection of Cuban Art, on view at the Museum from February 6 to July 6, 2025. Segura’s practice is also represented by the Museum’s recent acquisition of his sculpture Good Bye My Love, now installed in the Patel Family Lobby.
The sculpture additionally inspired the art book Hybrid of a Chrysler: A Provocation to Fly, a limited-edition book-object that documents the work’s journey. The volume is available for purchase at the Tampa Museum of Art and on Amazon.
LABEL
Esterio Segura (b. Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, 1970)
Hybrid of a Chrysler (versión con pasaporte) (version with passport), 2016
1953 Chrysler Windsor Limo-type, foam, aluminum, fiberglass
62 x 378 x 224 in. (157.5 x 960 x 569 cm)
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