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 Travel & Outdoors | The Cuba Connection | February 2005 
Cuban Artists Stride Confidently from Repression to Provocation
 Mary Thomas - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
In the Mattress Factory's Cuban artists exhibition is Lazaro Saavedra's "The Last Supper," top, which uses televisions, DVD players, a generator (representing Christ), acrylic table, wires and electrical outlets to plug into viewers' deepest attention. |
"New Installations, Artists in Residence: Cuba" is the most difficult exhibition the Mattress Factory has put on in its quarter-century history, which is saying a lot for a museum that thinks nothing of finding a source for batches of fly eggs, sawing a mountain of bricks into 16,000 units or melting down 15,000 pounds of paraffin in the service of art.
The snag that hampered the museum's current exhibition -- securing visas for its 11 artists -- was embedded in bureaucracy and far more difficult to surmount. Contrary to expectation, the denials were made on the American side of the process: The artists couldn't get into the United States from Cuba.
The travel restrictions made this particular exhibition especially problematic. Mattress Factory is a museum of installation art in which artists typically spend several-week residencies constructing their works. While the staff regularly pitches in to help artists realize their visions, it is the artist who ultimately makes decisions that spring up throughout the process of such complex large-scale expression.
The museum pulled off the show despite language barriers and frequent power failures in Cuba that delayed communications. Museum Executive/Artistic Director Barbara Luderowski found herself frequently consulting with lawyers for advice on how to stay on the correct side of procedure. One plus was Havana-based exhibition co-organizer and independent curator Magda Ileana Gonzalez-Mora, who also contributed an astute essay to the catalog ($15).
But anecdotes of struggle aside, what trumps is the art, an exhilarating and thought-provoking collection, in turn feisty and still, that proves that Cuban artists are as globally connected and contemporary as their colleagues throughout the world.
While it's tempting to imprint a political read over each of the works, the viewer has to be careful to not be presumptuous. That said, one can't escape a pervasive sense of loss, perhaps of suspension, that may be a conscious or subconscious reflection upon a society restricted, a culture put on hold.
The turned-down bed of Glenda Leon's "Habitat" is empty, backed by a sunny sky but facing a black night diamond-studded with stars. Rows of PVC pipe bleachers in Rene Francisco's "March without Perspective" wait for occupants. Deserted are the rusting metal boat and house forms of JEFF's (Jose Emilio Fuentes Fonseca) "Sentimiento" and "Pensamiento" -- which have a strange affinity with Bill Woodrow's nearby permanent installation.
In Yoan Capote's "Impotence," a speaker booms "No!" across a narrow aisle to another that quietly insists "Si." The voice of government strong-arming its citizenry? The personable Capote -- the only artist at the opening due to a quirk unrelated to the Pittsburgh show -- demurs, insisting that the visitor make his own interpretation. That's certainly in accordance with post-modern practice; but might it also be that he realizes the price of dissent?
That's brought home by Angel Delgado's "Memorias acumuladas," a minimalist presentation of rows of object-imbedded carved soaps inspired by his stay in a Cuban prison. He was imprisoned for a performance piece he enacted that involved pulling his trousers down and defecating on an outspread Cuban newspaper.
Sandra Ramos' "El camino de la incertidumbre (The Uncertain Road)" suggests instability, a response fortified by its undulating floor and the dizzying kaleidoscopic DVD videos whirling within wide tubes suspended from the dark room's ceiling.
The most overt politics has to do with U.S. policy. "In God We Trust/America's Most Wanted," by Jose A. Toirac with Meira Marrero and Loring McAlpin, effectively employs mass media imagery and pays homage to Andy Warhol, critiquing the Iraq war and the juncture of money, oil and politics. Ivan Capote, brother of Yoan, also looks West with his "Thought" carved in Spanish into a white picket fence emblematic of American suburbs.
Among many intense works, the most arresting is Lazaro Saavedra's "The Last Supper," patterned on de Vinci's masterpiece. The apostles here are replaced by monitors that play a montage of images ranging from lengths of electrical cable to elderly men eating in a group home. The Judas figure also harbors images of children lost at sea during attempted escape. Central is a generator representing Christ, the source of power.
The ocean is a powerful symbol for the island nation, reinforcing its isolation. But it can also be an expanse of serene beauty as in Erik Garcia Gomez's "Landscape," a series of backlit photographs taken over a 24-hour period.
Superseding physical boundaries in the 21st century is the Internet, and Luis Gomez cleverly uses it to reach as far as imagination can penetrate. For "Un Libro escrito por dentro y por fuera: Where is Luis Gomez?" he asked friends around the globe to transmit live from Webcams they set up.
A short film represents the artists in absentia, and a video made at the opening will transport some of the evening's excitement to them. But there's no way to compensate for the loss of exchange that would have occurred here, or the artists' inability to see in person their concepts realized.
What the museum succeeded in doing -- as they did in 1999-2000 with their "Installations by Asian Artists in Residence" exhibition and in 1995-96 with "Artists of Central and Eastern Europe" -- is broaden the local discussion of and experience of global contemporary art by presenting a contingent of artists not represented in the simultaneously running Carnegie International. By doing so, they both complement and challenge that senior exhibition, adding to the cultural desirability of Pittsburgh for residents and visitors alike. |
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