The title "How to (...) things that don’t exist" is a poetic invocation of art’s capacities and its ability to reflect and act upon life, power and belief. The sentence has a variable formula in which the verbs constantly change, anticipating the actions that might make present in contemporary life the things that don’t exist, are not recognized, or have not yet been invented.

Saavedra has consistently used performance art to prioritize the public’s relationship with art over the ownership of art objects. His series of drawings Historias para historiadores (Stories for Historians), 1989–91, are documents of his own artworks—some of them unrealized due to bureaucratic roadblocks in Cuba.

Saavedra is an artist who has continually indigested the systemic mechanisms that promote paralysis and absorption of artistic discourses, even those that at first seemed the most daring and rebellious ones. “Altar de St. Joseph Beuys” ( 1989), “Con la fuerza del ejemplo” (1993) or “El detector de ideologias” (1989) are some of his flagship samples in this regard.

Las personas no se molestan si llegan a una galería y se encuentran una mercancía disfrazada de arte, pero... ¿Qué pasaría si quitamos el disfraz? ¿Qué pasaría si vienen a ver arte y se encuentran una mercancía?