Cuba: between isolationism and globalness

Chiara Canali

Diversely from other Latin American scenes, Cuban artists have for a long time being focussing their own work on themes based on the island, the local and the vernacular, therefore in order to fully comprehend Cuban artistic history, you have to know the historical and sociocultural conditions that have created it. Nevertheless since the Cuban artists themselves have become so well-informed on the international art system and since they have become part of that system thanks to the overseas exhibition circuit, you have to try to judge Cuban art according to international standards as well.
Following this assumption does not mean overlooking the role that the artistic process has fulfilled in constructing the identity and national consciousness, a requirement which, more than formal solutions, makes Cuban art interesting as an alternative model of culture.
In New Art of Cuba, Luis Camnitzer1 mentions three elements that have influenced the definition of Cuban art since the Eighties: kitsch, the idea of recycling and the new generation of Eighties artists. Kitsch became an intrinsic part of Cuban culture as a product of colonization. Synthesized into art via Afro-Cuban Santería rituals, kitsch has been revived in some forms of folk art or reused as a source of inspiration for some products of High Culture.
Recycling has always been present in all its forms, from cooking to building. Buildings put up in an ostentatious style inherited from the Batista regime have been internally redesigned to serve more useful purposes (for example under Castro the National Bank was converted to become the largest hospital in Havana). This policy, if it has any sense from the point of view of economic conversion, has sacrificed the development of an official architectural language.
The new artistic generation, unleashed into this climate at the end of the Eighties, took on an important role first and foremost because it was the generation of people educated after the revolution, not on the pre-revolution memories. The participants, under-thirties and some of them still students, all very knowledgeable about socialist and capitalist art and the new aesthetic trends, regularly got together to discuss Cuba’s artistic problems under the guidance of critic Gerardo Mosquera, who gave a theoretical structure for their art.
Sharing common ideals and intentions, they began to develop an individual style and in their artistic techniques to show an opening-up towards renewal, which would then go on to be transmitted to the following generation, which would form at the end of the Nineties and to which the artists who make up the ContemporaneaCuba project belong.
The language of this very young generation does not constitute the only form of art created in Cuba, although in my opinion, it is the most interesting formula that is being produced today.
Contemporary Cuban art includes a multiplicity of influences and motifs derived from both the local island environment and also from reference to the international art scene.
The country and city landscape has always been a recurring artistic genre in different areas of artistic production: pleasant rural scenes, chaotic urban perspectives or panoramic views of the city, dotted with tiled roofs or invaded by different geometric structures. In reality this subject is a form of self-recognition which the artists are not always aware of: in a study of the landscape the desire to depict the physical and psychological environment of life, to confirm an existential experience transmitted with the images is shared, perpetuating and preserving the memory through the passing of time and the ages.
If this type of reference responds to the principles of so-called conservative art, the new artists have attempted to break with a contemplative, imitative attitude towards landscape in order to recreate rather than represent the reality.
After focusing on specific themes that concern the morphological features of the islands for a long time, such as the formation of the landscape, the relationship with the sea and the effects of isolation, the most recent Cuban trend turns towards global themes that concern immigration abroad, the development of the metropolises and the progress of modern technologies.
These young artists have gone in search of a unique, recognizable language, which recalls the traditional stylistic features of painting and sculpture despite being tainted with other expressive techniques such as digital photography, drawing with charcoals, wood block carving, printing and carving, in order to transcend pure imitation of what is real and explore the problems of the human condition in relation to the global dimension of civilization.
Each artist compares him or herself with the artistic technique according to his or her own predisposition: some are very attentive to form, and despite certain variations, the final result of the work acquires great importance; others are instead not interested in the exterior aspect of the work and concentrate vehemently on the theme of the debate, thoroughly dissecting the heart of the question.
Their art challenges certain pre-established aspects of society and sarcastically criticizes examples of egoism, fraud, hypocrisy and many other vices. Their code has a different level of complexity, adapting itself to cases and situations. Each artistic act or form is well thought out and arises from a question, inviting the observer to provide an answer.
Having to tackle the most varied, contradictory facets of our age, even more fragmented in the context of an island like Cuba, the semantic force of this art becomes metaphorical and gives a symbolic and emblematic value on contact with the observer’s projections.
From the vivid and serene explorations of nature to the dark, gloomy representations of the city, from the animist and spiritual visions of folk tradition to the revelatory icons of mass culture, through the entertaining mechanisms that throw irony onto the comparison of forms of local craftsmanship and processes of Western industrialization, Cuban art reflects the challenge of an island which is being transformed into a modern city, in constant conflict between the will to preserve its isolation and the desire to allow itself to be permeated by the innovational forces coming from globalness.