Two-month festival brought out the best in Havana's contemporary art
scene
By William Dunlap. Special to
The Washington Post.
Sunday, February 18, 2001; Page G04
Last in an occasional series
HAVANA --The visual arts vie with music, dance and religion for second place
behind baseball in the hearts and souls of Cuba's people. Arguably, the most
cosmopolitan of the Caribbean's island nations, Cuba is surely the most
American, as in "United States of . . . " Forty years of blockades,
embargoes, bluster and boat lifts have done little to alter this fact.
Contemporary Cuban culture is enjoying something of a resurgence on the
world stage. Of late, we seem to have an insatiable appetite for its food,
films, books and musicians.
So, it came as no surprise this winter when the International Art Mob, which
sits poised to pounce on whatever art fair or festival happens to be deemed of
the "moment," turned up in this graceful, if slightly decrepit, sad --
but resurgent -- city.
The Seventh Bienal de la Habana opened to transporting music, outrageous
dancing, sumptuous food, an endless flow of rum and -- oh, yes -- art in more
than 35 venues scattered around the city from Castle Morro to the farthest ends
of Miramar.
I joined this curious if somewhat incongruous crowd with my friend and
colleague, Nancy Matthews of Washington's Meridian International Center. Our
agenda included a symposium appearance to discuss cultural diplomacy and
Meridian's traveling exhibit program.
Every two years or so since 1983, the Bienal de la Habana has sprung up
phoenixlike under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture. The biennial, loosely
organized around themes like "Art, Society and Reflection" (1994), "The
Individual and His Memory" (1997) and this year's "Closer to Each
Other" in an effort to bring diverse cultures to mutual understanding
through the arts, has also proved a boon to the fledgling Cuban tourist
industry. In no small irony, artists who show and sell abroad and Cubans who
have converted their homes into restaurants are a crucial source of hard
currency for the dollar-starved economy.
The epicenter of the festival, which opened in mid-November and ran through
mid-January, was the Wilfredo Lam Center of Contemporary Art, nestled in the
heart of Old Havana. Its director, Nelson Herrera Ysla, has been the driving
force behind all seven biennials. Slightly built with close-cropped hair and
beard, sporting fashionable red-rimmed glasses, Herrera Ysla exudes a sense of
boundless energy and optimism. His conversation moves seamlessly between Spanish
and English as he dispenses assurances, encouragement and instructions
simultaneously.
"Bill, we are expecting thousands of Americans! What are we to do with
all these Americans?" he asks me not entirely in jest. One answer came the
following evening at the U.S. ambassador's residence, where a reception was held
for visiting Americans and what seemed to be half of Havana.
The United States doesn't, of course, have an ambassador in Cuba, but as
head of the U.S. Interests Section, Vicki Huddleston has the rank and occupies a
palatial Havana mansion and its lush tropical grounds. The State Department's
Art in Embassies staff had installed a stunning group of paintings by Cuban
American artists. Bus after bus dropped off well-heeled art aficionados and
cultural tourists from New York, New Orleans, Santa Fe, San Francisco,
Cincinnati and elsewhere.
With the possible exception of Manhattan's joyless, black-clad art minions,
it's generally conceded that artists have the most fun. That was certainly the
case at the biennial's amusing and somewhat unruly opening ceremony. Costumed
actors and street performers paraded to the Plaza Vieja, where artists had hung
scores of colorful banners that blended well with the laundry hanging from the
balconies of Havana's wonderful old buildings.
The winners of the 2000 Havana Biennial were announced to the rowdy crowd by
UNESCO's Pierre Restany. A trio of Cuban artists who call themselves Los
Carpentieros took the top prize for their installation "Transportable City."
Nancy and I had seen working drawings for this project at Cuban curator Cristina
Viva's studio the previous February. There was concern then that funds to
construct this ambitious piece could not be found in time, but below the Castle
Morro across the harbor stood the tubular steel, canvas-covered tent city that
in miniature mimicked the spires, domes and pitched roofs of Havana's skyline.
Since declaring the city a World Heritage Site in 1982, UNESCO, along with
the Cuban government, has undertaken, with striking results, a vast restoration
of the streets, plazas and buildings of colonial Havana. The sensuous lines and
soaring beauty of these architectural time capsules can almost make one forget
the cruel commerce of sugar, rum and slaves to which they owe their existence.
Many of the biennial's events and exhibitions took place in these dazzling
spaces, where the juxtaposition of modernist metaphors and materials with
rehabilitated dungeons, powder magazines and chapels often produced marvelous
results.
Artists from the Caribbean, Europe and the Americas -- including a few from
the United States -- showed up or sent their work. The Brandywine Print Workshop
in Philadelphia exhibited the products of a year-long collaboration, and a
delegation from Tampa's Graphic Studio was much in evidence. "Behind the
Door," an exhibition of Delta photographs by Millie Moorhead of Oxford,
Miss., was accompanied by bluesman Steve Cheseborough at the Ambos Mundos Hotel.
The exhibit of works by the late Jean-Michel Basquiat was a big draw at both
the Casa de las Americas and, appropriately enough, the Museum of Rum, whose
Fundacion Havana Club contributed considerable aid for the biennial. Basquiat's
wildly aggressive, graffitiesque works seemed tamed by time and this change of
latitude. What looked so radical a decade ago in New York came off as benign and
repetitive in Havana. An agonizing series of photographs documenting Basquiat's
rapid rise and his swift demise into addiction and an early death was the
strongest element of the show. It's hard to know what ideological lesson might
have been intended by this case study of a precocious young artist with
Caribbean roots whose dance with the twin devils of wretched excess and
free-market capitalism led to his destruction, but the tragedy of the story was
lost on no one.
Installation art was as prevalent as painting was scarce. With the exception
of a group exhibition of magic realism called "Post Medieval" at the
Convento de San Francisco, few artists chose to vent their angst via the
oh-so-retro process of applying paint to canvas.
Instead, video projections, photo documentation, manipulated sound,
feathers, dirt, dolls, dust, beds, toys, chairs, leather, lard, chewing gum,
bottles, string, sand, bones and faux body fluids were arranged on floors,
propped up against walls, suspended from ceilings or cleverly arranged to
address issues sacred and profane, social and aesthetic, but seldom political.
Cutting-edge contemporary art is no stranger to Cuba. Early on, the
avant-garde was boldly declared the official art of the revolution. Artists here
are well trained and versed in the often arcane language of modernism. Some, I
was told, have been known to disappear when their work aroused the ire of
officialdom. Miami's vibrant art scene owes a great deal to the Cuban
government's rigidly enforced "aesthetic" standards.
Abel Barroso, a recent graduate of Havana's elite Instituto Superior de
Arte, transformed the Castle Morro's canteen into a low-tech Internet cafe with
his whimsical kinetic wall sculptures of computers, word processors and
printers. I worked the primitive hand cranks and read fictional e-mail.
The ocean was a constant, either as subject or source in much of the art on
view. In Carlos Estevez Carasa's "Bottles to the Sea" installation at
the castle, 50 narrative drawings with return addresses were mounted over as
many bottles. The wall text stated that the piece would be complete only after
Estevez launched the bottles and drawings into the surf, each thrown from a
different nation's coast.
Aaron Salabarrias of San Juan employs commercial plastic products in his
installations. "Plasti-Sol" was made up of a flotilla of children's
pool toys suspended at head height from the gallery's ancient vaulted ceiling.
Walking among the colorful effigies of Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and Namu the
Killer Whale, it was hard not to reflect on the plight of Cubans who have
negotiated the Straits of Florida in craft hardly more seaworthy than these.
Any piece of performance art would be hard-pressed to compete with Havana's
lively street musicians, costumed señoritas, jugglers, fire-eaters,
Obispo barrel rollers, Cohiba-smoking tarot card readers and vintage Detroit
rolling stock. One work, however, was triumphant and made the whole trip
worthwhile.
Trinidadian choreographer and theater designer Peter Minshall secured for
his Callaloo company's "Dance of the Cloth" the Palacia Municipal's
majestic courtyard. This dramatic space, filled for the performance with
spectators and the faint sound of African drums, is dominated by a marble statue
of Cristobal Colon. As "that great sailor" (Minshall's description of
Christopher Columbus) looked on, three male dancers clad in black were
methodically harnessed into sophisticated superstructures of rods, wires, tubes
and tanks. Atop each flew some six yards of white sailcloth. The soundtrack
segued from percussion to classical refrains as the dancers acted out the voyage
of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria. Their slightest movement was magnified by
the billowing sails. As the music reached its peak, the sails were suddenly
drenched with red liquid that dripped onto the dancers' arms and torsos, and
puddled on the ancient stone floor. Then all was still and quiet.
"Dance of the Cloth" had compressed the Caribbean tragedy of every
middle passage into a 20-minute performance. The audience thundered its
approval, then filed out into the bright sun. No encore was possible. Columbus
alone stood unmoved.
William Dunlap is a Washington painter, curator and arts commentator for
WETA's "Around Town."
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