Exhibit to shine new light on Cuban cultural history
A landmark exhibition opening March 5 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston will give U.S. audiences their first comprehensive look at modern and contemporary Cuban art in more than 70 years.
In the meantime, one of the show’s outspoken artists visits Houston on Thursday to deliver a lecture.
The museum exhibition, “Adios Utopia: Dreams and Deceptions in Cuban Art Since 1950,” considers how the island nation’s revolutionary aspirations, then disillusionment, shaped the works of more than 50 of its major artists and designers.
Some were at the height of their careers in 1959, when Fidel Castro overthrew Cuba’s republican government and ushered in a period of social euphoria — the “utopia” of the show’s title. The youngest — many of whom were born in Cuba but didn’t stay there — matured after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, when ongoing economic isolation from the U.S. hit hardest.
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston director Gary Tinterow said the show, which will be on view through May 22, will provide a critically important new perspective on Cuba’s cultural history at “an ideal moment,” citing the easing of relations initiated by President Barack Obama in 2014.
Conceived by the Miami-based Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation and curated by Cubans Gerardo Mosquera, René Francisco Rodríguez and Elsa Vega, “Adios Utopia” was co-organized with the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, where it will travel next fall.
Mari Carmen Ramírez, the Houston museum’s renowned curator of Latin American art, called the project “an unprecedented collaboration.”
Ramírez said Cuba has a lively contemporary art scene. She counts the Havana Biennial, which Mosquera co-founded in 1984, as a trend-starter.
The show’s artists are well-known across Europe, Latin America and Asia, where they have never been restricted. But for U.S. audiences, “Adios Utopia” will open a completely new chapter of Latin American and contemporary art, Ramírez said.
“This is not just any survey. … It is a treasure trove of contemporary art that has never been seen in the U.S.”
Through painting, graphic design, photography, video, installa- tion and performance spanning six decades, the show will explore pivotal artistic movements that developed as Cuba’s artists confronted their country’s social and political programs.
Ramírez gave viewers a peek of powerful Cuban voices last year in the MFAH’s “Contingent Beauty” show, which covered all of Latin America. A few of those works will reappear in “Adios Utopia”: Los Carpinteros’ Soviet monument- inspired “Podgaric Toy,” made of black Legos; Yoan Capote’s “Stress (In Memoriam),” which combines human teeth with concrete and wood; and Tania Bruguera’s “Estadística (Statistics),” a flaglike construction of cardboard, human hair and fabric, owned by the MFAH.
As it happens, Bruguera will deliver Thursday’s 2016 Mitchell Artist Lecture, which this year is co-sponsored by the MFAH’s Latin Maecenas group.
A Havana native who divides her time between Cuba and the U.S., she has made headlines for provocative performance art focused on political oppression.
She created “Estadística” early in her career, building its stripes from various tones of hair that represent Cuba’s mixed population. During that period, she also hung a lamb carcass from her neck while consuming a mix of soil and salt water, inspired by a story about indigenous Cubans who said they’d rather eat dirt than yield to Spanish conquistadors.
No longer focused on making objects, Bruguera today tries to effect social change with what she calls “artivism.” Last year, Cuban authorities arrested her several times, temporarily confiscated her passport and detained her in Havana for nearly six months after she staged an openmicrophone event that invited people to speak their minds at Havana’s Plaza de la Revolucion.
She counts that “performance” among her best, she recently told a video interviewer, because it “challenged the view people have about Cuba. … It is not this idyllic island where everybody wants to live anymore.”