Art in Cuba now: Part II Poetic pragmatism in 21st-century Cuba

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Susan N. Platt continues her exploration of the Cuban art scene

Javier Castro, Luis Gárciga, Celia Gonzalez/YuniorAguiar, Renier Quer, and Grethell Rasúa are six artists who work primarily in video, performance, and installation art. They explore the contradictions, ambiguities, and negotiations between the institutional systems that control specific areas of Cuban society and the day-to-day life of ordinary Cubans. They frame their interpretations of this in-between space, with its hopes and desires and simple acts of sharing, with a sophisticated awareness of their own position. They live and work between the utopian and the pedestrian, between the abstract goals of artists such as Malevich and the poetry of the ordinary in the work of Marcel Duchamp and Bruce Nauman.  They produce analytical and often witty work that constructs from the most ordinary action or conversation a metaphor of the larger conditions and concerns of Cubans in the early 21st century.  

Their art documents how ordinary people ‘become liquid inside [official] structures’ as one artist put it:  people find ways to get what they need, make do, get by.  The artists’ themes include the health system, sexuality, legal systems, social boundaries, censorship, the financial system, the consumption of food, and access to technology. The result is a group of works that poetically suggest negotiations between hope and reality, between individuals and institutions, between abstract ideas and direct observation. 

These six artists have shared these concerns since 2004 and have produced about 70 short videos.  Their production of individual works, collaborations and projects suggests a flow between them that is full of trust and intimacy, a rare phenomenon. Sometimes the video is structured on the basis of a simple prompt, at other times the scene is set up; sometimes it captures an actual event or action.  They play with the boundaries of fiction and documentary, science and mythmaking, carefully tapping into myths as well as basic assumptions.

Javier Castro archives unnoticed events and customs on the margins of Cuban society (he lives in Vieja Habana, ‘Old Havana’).  Yo no le tengo miedo a eternidad (I Don’t Fear Eternity) (2006), is a video documenting a succession of people simply standing still; everyone seems to be waiting for something.  The stasis evokes contemporary Cuba, waiting for change, waiting for the future, waiting out the present.  Castro documents what is out there. Dossier (2009) is a poignant piece about three men who are aspiring artists but who exist far from the conventions of the art world. They explain their hopes as they show us their portfolios, seated informally in their homes, only half dressed.

A work by Luis Gárciga,  Las Huellas de mi deseo  (The Prints of my Desire) 2006–8, exploits the position of art as excluded from the embargo of goods into Cuba. Cubans traced their feet and specified what type of shoes they wanted. In an exhibition in Tampa, people bought the shoes according to what was requested. Because the shoes were art works in an art exhibition, they were sent to Cuba.

In Destinos posibles (Possible Destinations) 2008–9, Gárciga invites people to tell him their hopes: he takes passengers free of charge in an old taxi car, if they are willing to answer the question ‘What do you want out of life?’ The answers are simple: ‘live in a normal way with my family’, ‘have my son by my side’.  Likewise, in Mi Familia quiere un cambio  (My Family Wants a Change) (2007), on which he worked with Miguel Mora as ‘Luis or Miguel’, members of his family describe their dreams for remodelling their homes in a process that has been impossible because of the lack of materials and the oppressive legal restrictions:  we hear them ask for simple things, tiles to replace a mouldy shower wall, paint and plaster on a wall, a living room, a new bedroom, etc.

A resonant piece by Renier Quer, Bunker 2006, records the life of a guardian of a monument erected to a hero of the Revolution in Havana. He lives in a dark confined space inside the monument, perfectly happily and declares he will stay there until he dies (he has, in fact, died since the piece was completed). The poignant contradiction of his cramped living space and his positive comments suggests a metaphor of the change in perspectives between generations in Cuba. The monument honours a Cuban hero; the symbol has meaning for this elderly guardian and his generation, but not for young people.

Quer  bravely  probes the psychology of older Cubans, as in the touching pieceInvernadero (Greenhouse) 2009, which shows his father talking in his sleep about his memories as part of the national security system in the 1960s and ’70s. These fragments tell us only of sporadic memories, fears, events. But they also tell us of his father’s life, his own utopian hopes that led him to be part of the system.

Grethell Rasúa explores the dichotomy of what is agreeable and what is disgusting. In an extreme example, Con tu proprio sabor (With Your Own Flavour) 2005, she collects voluntary donations of excrement from people and uses it as fertilizer to grow spices to add flavour to food.  The people receive the spice plants grown in their own ‘donation’ as gifts.  In A prueba de sentidos (Testing Your Senses) 2006–7, a woman with an extreme phobia about electricity calms herself with creating hand-embroidered and decorated covers for Christmas lights which she is then able to sell.  Grethell Rasúa created  Dimensions variables  2008 with Javier Castro and Luis Gárciga, a humorous work that flirts with our expectations. We see a series of women holding up their hands as though they are measuring something, but we never know what it is; their guardedly humorous expressions suggest something sexual and we naturally jump to our own conclusions. 

Celia Gonzalez and Yunior Aguiar are more conceptual in their approach. They examine legal systems such as identity cards, or the laws about marriage and divorce, and call attention to the cracks in the system (by making their identity cards look the same, by marrying and divorcing over and over with no purpose such as the usual desire for access to foreign immigration or economic rewards ). They also think about Cuban history in the piece Siempre hay gente que me dice eso (Everyone Always Told Me This) 2009, in which they lay 204 concrete blocks of uneven lengths on the floor; handwritten sticky notes on the blocks identify the names of ministers who have governed Cuba from 1959–2009 and the length of the block reflects how long they have served. The piece tells of recent Cuban history through its constantly changing bureaucracy. It also suggests the instability of the governing structure in its irregularities and cracks. As we stand over the representation of Cuban government, we look down on the history of Cuba from a larger perspective.

Corte Evaluativo  No 2.  (Midterm Evaluation No. 2)  (Celia/Yunior with Luis Gárciga) (2008) asks children how they are being  privately tutored . It reveals a parallel structure to the official education system, because of the shortfalls of the system. Celia/Yunior have also created several works addressing the Internet, its absence in Cuba, and the ways in which people cope without it. Most recently they made a piece called Los amigos de mis amigos (My Friend’s Friends) 2011, about Facebook. Their many friends in their twenties who have left Cuba have put up Facebook profiles  telling what they miss in Cuba: meals, stories, books. The artists created a slide show of front page profiles of their friends for an exhibition in Havana, shown even as the physical print out of the pages are thrown out, elusive, fragmentary. This poignant piece speaks of emigration and return based on 21st-century social structures.

Keeping in mind that Cuba’s Internet is an internal internet, that ordinary people do not even have email, that the only artists who do are those who work at institutions, or who have connections with foreigners in Spain, Mexico or Miami, these artists are working with entirely different resources from artists in the rest of the world or even those successful international artists who are based in Cuba. ( See part 1 of this article, Cassone, February 2012) . They are on the ground with a close focus on their own culture; at the same time, they know what they are unable to access. One group work was called Residency, entirely devoted to the artists endeavouring to bypass their restrictions in order to contact international curators. They were unsuccessful.  

These artists reveal through the humbleness of their approaches paired with the intelligence of their perspective, a period of time in Cuba (the last decade and now) in which very slow change is occurring, but in which ordinary people must still make do, must ‘resolver’, make it happen in unorthodox ways, in order to manage the basics of life.  But within that reality, there is poetry, creativity, hopes, courage, perseverance, and a culture of sharing that makes our own lives seem vacuous. In a wonderful piece by Javier Castro  Reorganización familiar para beneficio gratuito mediante préstamo  (Family Reorganization for free benefit by means of borrowing) (2006), part of a project all the artists created called Bueno, Bonito, Barata (Good, Pretty, Cheap). a family borrows all the ingredients for a traditional Cuban meal from their equally impoverished neighbours in a cramped apartment building. The sense of community and sharing among people who have little is a powerful statement about the central spirit of Cuban society and a tribute by these artists to their own country.  

These are a group of courageous artists who are working at the edge of what is possible. They represent a new sensibility, without grandiosity, without very few foreign connections: they are artists of a contemporary Cuba that is changing before their eyes.