53 documents
Can a Biennial Respect Difference in a Country that Represses Dissidence? On the Havana Biennial
Solveig Font, Coco Fusco, Celia Irina González, Hamlet Lavastida, Julio Llópiz Casal, and Yanelys Nuñez Leyva
e-flux Notes
Posted: September 13, 2024
Category
Contemporary Art
Subjects
Biennials, Cuba
IV INSTAR Film Festival
Miñuca Villaverde, Fernando Villaverde, Alejandro Alonso, Rafael Ramírez, and INSTAR
e-flux Events
Posted: December 9, 2023
Category
Film, Latin America
Subjects
Experimental Film, Documentary, Cuba, Diaspora
Museo de Arte y Diseño de Miramar (MADMi)
Dagoberto Rodríguez: RETROPIA
e-flux Announcement
Posted: October 7, 2023
Category
Latin America
Subjects
Cuba, Nostalgia
Institution
e-flux Notes
New editor / recent essays
e-flux Announcement
Posted: August 15, 2022
Category
Psychology & Psychoanalysis
Subjects
Cuba, Ukraine, Russia
Institution
Cuba’s 11J: One Year Later
Coco Fusco
e-flux Notes
Posted: July 11, 2022
Category
Communism
Subjects
Cuba, Art Activism, Authoritarianism
# 128
A Turntable
Enrique Del Risco
The monthly ration of eggs was reduced to the extent that eggs ended up being nicknamed “cosmonauts” because of the countdown: “8, 7, 6, 5, 4.” I remember that at some point, the personal ration was reduced to just three eggs per month. After that, I don’t remember anything.
e-flux Journal
Posted: June 16, 2022
Subjects
Food & Cooking, Cuba
e-flux Notes
Posted: January 27, 2022
Category
Latin America
Subjects
Cuba, Authoritarianism
e-flux
Intellectuals with Words
e-flux Announcement
Posted: July 3, 2021
Subjects
Cuba, Protests & Demonstrations, Police & Prisons
Institution
# 118
The Artist as Hostage: Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara
Coco Fusco
Foreign interest in Cuba remains dominated by the myth of a revolutionary utopia. That vision of Cuba, however dear it may be to progressive idealists, has caused great harm by confusing the idea of the revolution with the reality of Cubans’ experience. It’s time for foreigners to let it go and remember that Black lives matter in Cuba, too.
e-flux Journal
Posted: May 12, 2021
Category
Contemporary Art
Subjects
Police & Prisons, Cuba, Art Collectives
KfW Stiftung
Hamlet Lavastida: Cultura Profiláctica
e-flux Announcement
Posted: April 12, 2021
Subjects
Cuba, Libraries & Archives
Institution
Festival Forum: International Short Film Festival Oberhausen 2020
The Woman by the Window
Friday, June 19, 2020
e-flux Film
Subjects
Cuba, Video Art, Experimental Film, Documentary, State & Government
Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo
Upcoming exhibitions
e-flux Announcement
Posted: January 24, 2018
Category
Latin America
Subjects
Decolonization, Collaboration, Public Space, Documentary, Public Art, Revolution, Cuba
Institution
Walker Art Center
Adiós Utopia: Dreams and Deceptions in Cuban Art Since 1950
e-flux Announcement
Posted: November 6, 2017
Category
Installation, Performance, Photography, Painting, Utopia
Subjects
Revolution, Video Art, Cuba
Institution
Fondazione Merz
Carlos Garaicoa: El Palacio de las Tres Historias
e-flux Announcement
Posted: October 19, 2017
Category
Architecture, Urbanism, Economy
Subjects
Site-Specific Art, Crisis, Cuba, State & Government
Institution
Ludwig Forum Aachen
Art x Cuba
e-flux Announcement
Posted: August 27, 2017
Subjects
Art Collecting , Cuba, Caribbean
Institution
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA)
Tania Bruguera: Talking to Power / Hablándole al Poder
e-flux Announcement
Posted: June 12, 2017
Category
Education, Performance, Communism
Subjects
Retrospective, Socially Engaged Art, Cuba, Art Activism, State & Government
Institution
Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam, Havana
Ensemble sin órganos
e-flux Announcement
Posted: June 15, 2016
Category
Performance
Subjects
Cuba
Institution
PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea
Cuba. Tatuare La Storia / Armin Linke: The Appearance of That Which Cannot be Seen
e-flux Announcement
Posted: May 27, 2016
Category
Photography
Subjects
Caribbean, Cuba
Institution
e-flux Announcement
Posted: December 2, 2015
Subjects
Art Criticism, Cuba
Institution
# 68
Editorial—“Cuba: The Fading of a Subcontinental Dream”
Coco Fusco
In the spring of 2009, during the 11th Havana Biennial, a recent art school graduate named Hamlet Lavastida stenciled a quote from a famous speech by Fidel Castro on the steps of Galería Habana and called his piece Intellectuals Without Words . The quote reads:
The existence of an authority in the cultural sector does not mean that one should worry about abuses by that authority. Who would want, or who would desire for this authority not to exist? If we continue with that line of…
e-flux Journal
Posted: December 1, 2015
Category
Borders & Frontiers, Film, LGBTQ+
Subjects
Revolution, Authoritarianism, Cuba, Memory, Tourism, Editorial
# 68
The Forbidden Symbols
Ernesto Hernández Busto
1.
The funniest moment of the only movie that Caetano Veloso ever made, O Cinema Falado (1986), is a scene in which Brazilian actress Regina Casé parodies the gestures and body language of Fidel Castro. 1 Within the collage of an avant garde film-essay, the parody is a humorous parenthesis that alternates between quotes from Heidegger, Guimarães Rosa, Thomas Mann, Gertrude Stein, combining with popular dance and music scenes, the visual grammar of Cinema Novo, and an entire…
e-flux Journal
Posted: December 1, 2015
Category
Film, Performance, Language & Linguistics, Surveillance & Privacy
Subjects
Cuba, Propaganda, Nihilism , Death
# 68
Letter from Prison
Danilo Maldonado Machado (El Sexto)
Valle Grande Prison
From “the (solitary confinement) cell”
September 16, 2015
Where I am there is little light. I walk around in my underwear because I don’t want to wear the regular prisoner’s uniform.
At night they give me the mattress for five to six hours.
I only drink water, and there will be no possibility for you all to reply to this letter because I don’t want to “burn” my contacts.
Thanks to Lia, Gorki, Antonio, and everyone for helping my mom…
e-flux Journal
Posted: December 1, 2015
Subjects
Art Activism, Cuba, Police & Prisons, Violence
# 68
Apotheosis Now
Iván de la Nuez
1.
Fatherland or Death. With the Revolution Everything, Against the Revolution Nothing. The Future Belongs Entirely to Socialism. The Most Beautiful Land (according to Columbus). The First Free Territory in the Americas (according to Fidel) …
These absolutes have not disappeared from propaganda or persuasion, from the dreams or nightmares of Cubans, but it is good to know that this Caribbean island has for some years now slowly abandoned “Life” in capital letters, as well as the…
e-flux Journal
Posted: December 1, 2015
Category
Globalization, Capitalism, Internet
Subjects
Revolution, Neoliberalism, Corruption, Cuba
# 68
Condemn Us, It Does Not Matter: Art Will Absolve Us
Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti
First off, I apologize for speaking in the first person.
I usually do not respond, at least publicly, to any critic or spectator regarding the details of the “machinery” of our productions. I have always thought, like García Marquez, that what I have tried to say can be found in what I did. Instead, I learn much more by listening to the different interpretations of what I do, which at times is the result purely of artistic intuition or craft, based on the experience of numerous…
e-flux Journal
Posted: December 1, 2015
Category
Film, Theater, Performance, Fascism
Subjects
Cuba
# 68
Castrolence
Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo
Finally he had been left alone. Stooped, his perfect Greek profile had now become like that of a vulture. A kind of unkind condor. Carrion claws dripping with his own feces, a layer of bacteriostatic containment. I’m talking about biology. About beauty, that is. And I am, of course, talking about him.
There is a certain sense of classical wisdom in the birds of prey. Something noble in their adapted gestures of eating cadavers. A symptom that life never ends. These are cynical cycles. A…
e-flux Journal
Posted: December 1, 2015
Subjects
Authoritarianism, Cuba, Death, Ghosts & Spirits, Revolution, Failure
# 68
Artist Against Artist
Sandra Ceballos
Military and cultural officials are not the only ones to blame for the intense scrutiny of artists and the deliberate acts of violence against them that erase them from state media and other systems of dissemination, legitimation, and history. Nor are the art critics and curators the only arbiters who evaluate or devalue, who elevate or bury artists’ work. Worst of all are the searing, inexcusable verdicts handed down by the artists themselves. They pit themselves against one another as they…
e-flux Journal
Posted: December 1, 2015
Subjects
Cuba, Curating, Censorship
# 68
On Censorship and Its Demons
Enrique Colina Alvarez
During the past fifty-six years, censorship in Cuba of works of art and the cultural practitioners who produce them—justified as a defense of the Revolution—has paradoxically resulted in a boomerang effect against the political prestige of the revolutionary process. From the beginning, that revolutionary process encouraged and developed the artistic expressions that underpin and reinforce our national identity, ensuring the continuity of the positive legacy of this time in our history. If we…
e-flux Journal
Posted: December 1, 2015
Category
Contemporary Art
Subjects
Censorship, Cuba, State & Government, Media Critique
# 68
Tania Wins, Civil Rights Continue to Lose
Lázaro Saavedra
“Art is a santería altar that sometimes needs to be fed violations of civil rights.”
—Tata Watashi
Tania has taken advantage of a specific situation to define a problem by means of an attempt at an “aRtivist” action. She knows perfectly well that there are only two answers to her project: “yes” or “no.” Either answer will provide good results that will beef up her artistic CV more than advancing civil rights in Cuba. She knows the game, and she sets it in motion; others have…
e-flux Journal
Posted: December 1, 2015
Category
Performance, Human and Civil Rights
Subjects
Art Activism, Authoritarianism, Cuba, Censorship
# 68
The Putinization of Cuban Art
Antonio José Ponte
The contemporary art biennial that took place this past summer in Havana has been called the “Biennial of the Thaw.” The US market tuned in, and many Cuban artists living abroad returned to the island to exhibit their works. With the legitimacy that the label of contemporary art accords to certain gestures, there was an Obama look-alike strolling through the city, a sandy beach right in the middle of the Malecón, and a Facebook “Like” icon the size of an official government propaganda…
e-flux Journal
Posted: December 1, 2015
Subjects
Biennials, Cuba, State & Government
# 68
Alamar: An Oblique Approach
Amaury Pacheco del Monte
Every presence poses a conflict,
he said one afternoon through his mysterious block
of teeth, confidently and methodically chewing …
Extension: estranged …
What Alamar is today—that estranged extension—springs from the La Noria ranch owned by the Velazco family. La Noria, “the watermill,” a word which itself embodies cycles, a machine whose buckets extract pieces of history chained to time, as the sound of its toothed wheel leaves us a howl.
A municipality to the…
e-flux Journal
Posted: December 1, 2015
Category
Architecture
Subjects
Revolution, Housing & Real Estate, Poetry, Cuba