Subtly subversive undertones are apparent in the visually stunning
exhibit 'Passionately Cuban' at University at Albany
By Timothy Cahill, Staff writer.
NY Times Union. First published:
Sunday, November 4, 2001
ALBANY -- Beauty hits you right between the eyes from the moment you enter
the galleries at the University Art Museum's exhibit "Passionately Cuban.''
The work wears the fashions of a fascinating foreign culture, a land of bright
colors, gorgeous designs and seductive images.
This show, featuring the work of nine artists from the Cuban capital Havana,
is one of the fall's visual high points, particularly now that the foliage
season is finished. Only one previous exhibit at the University at Albany
galleries, Xu Bing's "Book of the Sky,'' offered so much of interest and
delight, from literally every vantage point and in any direction.
Cuba, although it's situated just south of the United States in the
Caribbean Sea, is almost as unknown to most Americans as Afghanistan. Because of
the long-standing political chasm between the United States and the communist
regime of Fidel Castro, the country has existed for more than four decades as a
kind of "terra non grata,'' a nation so unwelcome here than until recently
it wasn't even shown on TV weather maps.
When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1990, the loss of foreign aid threw Cuba
into a period of harsh poverty, which for much of the population continues to
this day. It was only in the mid-'90s, when the U.S. dollar was accepted as one
of the official currencies and the island opened its borders to tourism, that
the economy improved.
Still, Havana is a city where fancy foreigners-only hotels stand a few
blocks from crumbling neighborhoods, where tourists experience luxury while the
locals can't get toilet paper. The country is a popular, cheap vacation spot for
Europeans and Canadians, though American travel remains restricted to certain
professionals and students.
Soulful art: Americans who have gone to Cuba, as I was able to do last year,
all come back with pretty much the same impression, of a country marked by great
beauty and blight, whose people are universally warm and resilient. As for the
art being made there (and now on display here), it is visually rich and
inventive -- the word you keep coming back to is "soulful.''
Cuban artists give their work a patina of lush spirituality that's gorgeous
to behold, and this is true even for art that's politically, philosophically or
psychologically charged.
At UAlbany, this visual opulence is apparent everywhere, in the vibrant
fabrics of the quilted banners by Ibrahim Miranda, in the shifting mosaic hues
of Jacqueline Brito's oil paintings, in the brilliant palette of Alicia Leal's
acrylics, even in the distressed blacks and grays of Belkis Ayon's prints and
Rene Pena's photography. The look charms your vision right from the first, and
you could happily take in this show on purely visual terms if you wanted to.
Which would, with piercing accuracy, replicate the typical tourist
experience of Cuba -- a wealth of sightseeing but a poverty of insight.
After looking for a time in the UAlbany museum, however, what comes clear is
how much the art's beautiful patina serves as a veil, an ornate sash covering
one's true face. The particular charisma of Cuban art rises not just from warmth
and resilience, but from a sense of darkness, mystery and struggle as well. The
Spanish call this quality duende, a term that connotes not just charm but
elements of blood and fire, too.
That's not to diss the "veil.'' If anything, such dissembling makes
perfect sense in a country that's endured 40 years of totalitarian mind control
and now depends for its livelihood on the goodwill of tourists. In such a world,
a smile and a "No problem!'' is a defense mechanism that might mean life or
death.
Discretion demanded: The artists in this show represent a generation that
was born under Castro but did not flee his rule. As American greenbacks have
flooded the island, and the aging Fidel has eased up somewhat on the despotic
atmosphere (so as not to freak out the tourists), these artists have seized on a
kind of artistic freedom. But it's hardly protected by any law or custom, and
demands a certain discretion.
Where American or European artists come out with indignant and obvious
statements about injustice, despair, deprivation, etc., Cuban artists make their
point through misdirection and subterfuge.
Menace underlies nearly all the art in "Passionately Cuban.'' The
gorgeous mosaic surfaces of Brito's large paintings contradict the anonymous
figures they depict, bound, gagged and set loose in a world without mooring.
Likewise, her small collaged pieces are both comical and creepy -- giant ants
lay siege to a globe, spiders and goblins hover over a city skyline, a fighter
jet cuts the profile of a sensuous-eyed Madonna.
Doom hangs over Ayon's dark collograph prints of blank-faced men and women,
built around the legends and rites of a Cuban secret society. It turns out their
darkness is also psychic pain, which eventually led the artist to suicide. Elsa
Mora's powerful series of self-portrait photographs, done in honor of her amiga,
mines both Ayon's suffering and Mora's own devastation after the death.
The bright colors and folk-art imagery of Leal's work draw you into a world
of sexual and religious myth, fecund with decadence and ardor. The same might be
said of Pena's grainy black-and-white photographs of himself, which explore
issues of race and sexuality.
A gem bursts into flame inside a martini glass in one of Miranda's quilted
banners, while in a set of expertly rendered woodcuts the same artist displays
stark, apocalyptic visions of attack and destruction. The drawings of Yamilys
Brito and the performance-photographs of Cirenaica Moreira express existential
dread at the ways others seek to take control of us, body and soul.
Even Abel Barroso's installation "Third-World Internet Cafe,'' a series
of whimsical, decidedly low-tech computers made of wood and arranged around
small tables, laces its wit with social commentary. His "Mango'' computers
(not Apple or PC), with their paper-scroll screens and hand-cut, wooden-gear
guts, lampoon consumer technology, to be sure.
But they're not without some rue as well; in Cuba, e-mail is a luxury
controlled by the state, and almost no one has access to the freedom of
information the World Wide Web offers. So Barroso's cafe is also a protest
against the violence -- intellectual and, by extension, physical -- of dictator
rule.
For the artists in this exhibit, being "Passionately Cuban'' involves a
terrible beauty. It calls for a delicate negotiation between love of country and
the imperative of freedom. | 
