|
 Havana's 13th Biennial kicked off this weekend with works by
more than 300 contemporary artists from 52 countries taking over
the city's museums, galleries and open-air spaces, and many more
collateral exhibits.
"They turned my home into an artwork," said Silvia Perez,
smiling at the paper sprouting from the colonnade of her home, a
piece by Cuban artist Elio Jesús Fonseca. "The artist said it
meant peace."
The transformation of the Malecon seafront boulevard into an
open-air, interactive gallery, has become one of the most
popular venues of Cuba's most important arts event.
Along the sidewalk this year are smooth boulders encased in
volcanic slabs by Mexican artist Jose Davila, while a swirling
light installation by Peruvian artist Grimanesa Amoros protudes
from a building.
Cuba's Communist government, which has heavily promoted the arts
since the country's 1959 leftist revolution, created the Havana
Biennial in 1984 to promote artists from the developing world,
especially Cuban ones.
This year, 80 Cubans will exhibit their work, including a
performance on Monday by Manuel Mendive, considered the
Caribbean island's top living artist.
Still, it also includes a large contingent of European and U.S.
artists including Cuban-Americans like Enrique Martínez Celaya
and Emilio Perez.
Biennial Director Jorge Alfonso said it had been a challenge to
stage the biennial given Cuba's difficult economic situation -
authorities postponed it half a year - but that it had succeeded
underscored the importance Cuba placed on culture.
"Not even in the most difficult moments have we ever given up on
staging one of these kind of events," he told Reuters.
"The slogan of this year's edition, 'the construction of the
possible', is related to our ideal that a better world is
possible."
[to top of second column] |
Some artists who are critical of the government however have
subverted that slogan.
In one piece on the Malecon called "Potemkin Village", Cuban-born
artist Juan Andres Milanes Benito who lives in Norway has propped
what appears to be the perfect facade of a building on another that
is falling into disrepair.
"It fits a lot with the Cuban government these days and how the
system is working - there is a lot of facade," he said. "Inside it
is not so perfect."
Originally he had wanted to replicate the facade of a renovated
government building but authorities would not allow him, he said.
Some Cuban artists feel the Havana Biennial itself is a facade
papering over simmering tensions between them and authorities.
Artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, who led a campaign against a
controversial new decree on the cultural sector last year, was
arrested last Friday after staging a small yet politically charged
performance in his neighborhood.
His whereabouts remain unknown, his friends say. Asked by Reuters
about the arrest in a news conference, the head of Cuba's National
Council of Visual Arts, Norma Rodriguez, said "as far as I know he
is an activist not an artist".
Cuba considers dissidents to be mercenaries in the pay of the United
States trying to subvert the government.
The Havana Biennial runs until May 12.
(Reporting by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
[© 2019 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2019 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |
