Elmer Castillo is a Cuban-American visual artist and author based in Miami, Florida. His work explores memory, identity and the limits of transformation through a distinctive language centered on the spiral as a symbol of growth, containment and persistence. Working across painting, installation and mixed media, he incorporates organic materials such as plant fibers and roots, soil, wood, resin, glass… creating a dialogue between nature, history and human experience.

He studied IT at Alcala de Henares University in Spain and has specialization courses of Art History at Palermo University and Contemporary Art with the MoMA, New York. Castillo began exhibiting in Cuba in the late 1990s and has since developed his artistic career across Cuba, Spain and the United States. He has written the books "The Spiral Cannot Expand",  "Art&Habanos. Smoke and Brushstrokes" and "Homenaje a Celia Cruz en Cuba". 

He has presented the visual and literary project The Spiral Cannot Expand at Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello in a collateral exhibition during the Venice Biennale 2026. Both, the printed and the artist books were incorporated to the ASAC Library of La Biennale di Venezia. 

Castillo has been accepted as a Participating Artist to Florence Biennale 2027.