By Fabiola Santiago. fsantiago@herald.com. Published Friday, April 28, 2000, in the Miami Herald
The gallery name: Nabuc.
``Read it backward,'' says artist Miguel Ordoqui.
The name couldn't be more fitting to the theme of the gallery's new exhibition Mariel: 20 Years Later, which opens at 6:30 p.m. today at 850 S. Miami Ave. with a block party to commemorate the Mariel boatlift anniversary.
Like several similar exhibits at various Miami-Dade art galleries, the 29-artist collection celebrates the generation of Cuban artists that fled the island in 1980 as part of the exodus of more than 125,000.
``We came with a strong desire to create, with a zeal to express ourselves,'' says Ordoqui, who is participating and organizing the Nabuc exhibition.
The work of the Mariel artists ranges from the brilliant palates of Luis Pardini and Pedro Damian to the sensual landscapes of the young and hip Sinuhe Vega to the abstract work of the late Ernesto Briel.
Vega, who was 8 years old when he left Cuba and whose father Luis Vega is also a well-known Mariel artist, is featured through May at C & A Fine Art, 1940 Ponce de Leon Blvd., with the collection Dripping Blue Memories.
Here's a sampling of other shows:
At O&Y Gallery, 110 Valencia Ave., the 22-artist exhibit 20 Years of Art on the Diaspora is on display until Tuesday.
Two of the works are by the most prominent artists of the Mariel generation -- Carlos Alfonso and Humberto Dionisio, both now dead.
Although most of the artists in the O&Y and Nabuc exhibits came during the five-month boatlift, some, like sculptor Laura Luna, ceramic artists Ronald and Nelson Curras and painters Felix Gonzalez and Jose Chiu, didn't. But they identify themselves as part of the Mariel generation.
Gonzalez, whose striking oil Domino Nocturno (Nocturnal Domino) is at O&Y, arrived in South Florida on Jan. 10, 1980, -- three months before the boatlift -- after a dangerous journey lost at sea.
``I have identified with Mariel from the beginning because it is the same experience, the same generation,'' Gonzalez said.
At the Agustin Rivero Art Gallery, 1824 Ponce de Leon Blvd., Jesus Selgas' collection Los Hijos de los Dioses (Children of the Gods) features the portraits of friends and relatives cloaked in the colorful personalities of the deities of the Santeria religion -- the striking yellow of Ochun, the
royal blue of Yemaya.
The New Jersey artist's show, which includes a portrait of writer Zoe Valdes as the goddess Ochun, runs until May 6.
Later this summer, collector and writer Jose Alonso presents The Art of Mariel at Jose Alonso Fine Arts, 3072 SW 38th Ave., from Aug. 25 to Sept. 1.
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