Revista Negra #12 (ENG) by NEGRA Revista Cubana de Fotografía

may. 2015 / n.12

negra Havana’s Creative Photography School Magazine

DOSSIER 4

José Manuel Fors

Bimonthly Edition

NEW

FotoFAC 12 negra 1

Cuban Art Factory in the XII Biennial of Havana

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Bimonthly Edition

Summary

maY. 2015 / n.12

DIRECTOR

Tomás R. Inda Barrera EDItion Y CORRECtIoN

Yalemi Barceló

Ailen Maleta San Juan

Dorcas Rodríguez Legal Counsel

José Manuel Fors: from the object to the image... and vice versa [Shirley Moreira]

FotoFAC

NEW

Photo-mania

22 Skylights: Alejandro Alonso’s intrusive light [Antonio Enrique González Rojas]

Translation

Coordinator

DOSSIER

12 Cuban Art Factory in the XII Biennial of Havana [Astrid Orive García]

Art & Design Director

David Friedman

25 The object as consolation: Yomer Montejo’s photo-radiographs [Antonio Enrique González Rojas] 27 Young looks at the XII Havana Biennial [Carlos Gámez] 28 Glamour and Decay Judgments. The big kiss [Yenny Hernández Valdés] 30 For the 90 years of Raul Corrales [Claudio Sotolongo]

Jenny Etcheverry

31 Dancing for the Camera [Claudio Sotolongo]

Editorial Board

Jorge Luis Rodríguez Márgel Sánchez Haydee Oliva Valle Enrique Rottenberg Cristina Díaz Erofeeva

Developing

32 Image like word: A shutter release in the sense of death [Yailuma Vázquez]

NOVEL

46 In order to touch the sky. Harold Ferrer [Haydee Oliva Valle]

Photo by Photo

The clothesline

88 Story Dandelion [Ahmel Echevarría]

21stStreet e/ Paseo y A

Tel.: + 537 832 6592 efchabana@gmail.com www.efchabana.com

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On the Cover

[JosĂŠ Manuel Fors]

DETAIL

We are also on ISSUU

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http://issuu.com/revistanegra NEXT

s/t, 2011

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DOSSIER

José Manuel Fors: from the object to the image... and vice versa [Shirley Moreira]

work of art is that space (tangible or not) in which the artist materializes his creative concerns. For José Manuel Fors trees, land, memory... have become reason and work per se. In his work he seems to have a negative to be anchored to a specific manifestation. Even though he has a passion for photography and finds it to be the perfect medium to deliver his discourse, he can’t separate himself from objects and memories. And so his works are halfway between installation and photography, between selfreferentiality and global concerns, ready to connect with the viewer and project upon him a world of different sensations. In 1976 Fors graduated from the San Alejandro Academy. In his early works he used material painting. His influences were marked mainly by the work of some Spanish artists such as Antoni Tàpies and Manolo Millares. In these early pieces he used very rustic fabrics to which clung waste materials, ropes, and then painted them in one color (usually gray, ocher or green tones), with industrial paint. With this type of work, in 1981 he participated in the exhibition Volume 1; but he actually painted very little, just the minimum needed to respond to the academies requirements. Soon he would let go of two-dimensionality in order to start working with objects. In that same year, he joined the Sano y sabroso / Healthy and tasty exhibition. For this occasion he used the drawers of his house’s furniture and filled them with chunks of tree trunks. In this manner a period of work that would mark his production until today began: his interest in objects and natural space; a motivation that would gradually turn stronger. In 1983 he held his first personal exhibition called Acumulaciones / Accumulations. Here he worked with plies of different elements such as wood, nylon monofilaments, as well as fallen leaves and Plexiglas cubes, which would be reiterated in many of his future produc-

Acumulaciones / Accumulations, 1983 Installations

tions. These were not exactly waste materials, but rather materials that had some industrial features. The gallery hall was intervened by four floor installations consisting of piles, each one of different materials (dry leaves, wood, soil and nylon monofilaments); and two bi-dimensional wall pieces of geometric composition made of aluminum, Plexiglas, photography and nylon monofilaments. The internal structure of these works, viewed independently, didn’t provide any new elements other than those already known from previous paintings and installations; however, the 6 works seen as a whole, due to their spatial disposition and the visual dialogue between them, created a single space, all integrated as one work. I think this exhibition was novel within the evolution of Fors’ work, since for the first time it allowed him to build his concept of “landscape”. [...] Fors took his first photograph in 1982. It was a “portrait” of a destroyed old park bench, which together with two other images (a door surrounded by leaves and a section of a broken sidewalk with grass) he presented at a National Photography event in negra 5

DOSSIER

first photography, 1982

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DOSSIER

Hojarasca, permanent collection, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes

Havana that year. He had also carried out some interesting photographic work, which was actually the documentation of a landscape intervention designed based on the Hojarasca installation. Photography was showing him that it was a media which could hold objects, processes, ephemeral interventions and spaces which until now he had manipulated physically and three-dimensionally.1 After these preliminary essays, the artist finally arrives to photography with the exhibition De lo contemporáneo, opened in 1985 at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. The curatorial theme was geared towards creators establishing relationships between art and science. Among them, Jose Bedia sought connections with anthropology; Gustavo Pérez Monzón hooked up with mathematics, and Brey worked with the figure of Humboldt. Fors, meanwhile, chose the theme of his grandfather, (1) Cristina Vives, “La tierra, el árbol, los objetos, el hombre y su imagen”, in the Cuban Photography Magazine, n. 1, Year 3, 2007, pp. 84-85.

who was a renowned Cuban botanist. After having selected the topic, he mixed pictures of his with images taken by his silviculturist grandfather. In a closed space within the museum halls, Fors deployed an apotheosis of objects: photocopies of his grandfather’s photographs, his treatise botany books, collection of timber samples -part of the collection established by the scientist-, and three large dimension photographic mosaics Bosque de pinos / Pine Forest, Sombra bajo 5 billones de árboles/Shadow under 5 billion trees and Homenaje a un silvicultor / Homage to a silviculturist. In order to build this installation he dug into his family memoirs, in the family’s photographic collection, he studied scientifically a lot about trees and lumber, he read letters and documents; in short, he managed to tie up loose ends of his own earlier works, and structured a family story of whose

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DOSSIER

Homenaje a un silvicultor / Homage to a silviculturist, 1985

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DOSSIER

legacy he was the heir and within which he had grown. 2 From this time on Fors’ work, which was already defined by the use of objects, recycling and allusions to the passage of time, begins to show concern for the artist’s family, in some measure feeling self-referential, always mixed with his love and (2) Ídem.

interest in science and nature. Photography works its way into his work due to its permanent nature, establishing a direct connection with memories, memory and the passage of time; elements that become the essence of his future work. Following this line of thought, and in clear reference to antiquity, then chose to display in sepia the visual result of his work. “From now on the use of family images in his work would increase, as well as the use of negra 9

DOSSIER

Cruz / Cross, exposition From the negative, 2000

documents, postcards, letters, objects and dissimilar fragments which he has collected throughout the years and with which he has coexisted”.3 Since the late eighties, this creator’s exhibitions have used photography. With exquisite detail, Fors composes diverse plots using repeated images of trees, family objects, and city places, among others. However, although in photography he has found a strong support to enable his creativity, in the dynamics of his work, it is used simply a means. Objects, materials and textures remain the undisputed protagonists of his artistic work. He’s interested in sifting through memory’s subterfuges and pho(3) Ibídem, p. 7.

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tography has been the ideal way to document that process. Over the course of his work he has reached different solutions which support the dynamics of his discourse visually and conceptually. Los Atados / The Bundles are a collection of family documents: photographs, letters, newspapers which directly refer to the importance of family memories. Circles and crosses are other of his most recurring formal methods, in which he reiterates images and objects in order to empower the meaning of his works. José Manuel Fors’ works, with the help of objects and photography, has gone through several stages. Initially he focused his interest in matter and waste materials. Then he finally reached what would be

DOSSIER

Historias circulares / Circulars stories

the core of his work: the elements of nature and his family. Finally, during his last personal exhibition held at Villa Manuela in 2014, he reintroduced waste materials, moving a bit away from photography, although it is still present in his installations.

[Shirley Moreira] Havana, 1990. BA in Art History. Curator and editor at the Sello de Arte Cubano and professor of the EFCH. exposition, Villa Manuela, 2014

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Cuban Art Factory in the XII Biennial of Havana [Astrid Orive GarcĂa]

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Collateral to the Twelfth Havana Biennial, the Cuban Art Factory presents Utopia, an exhibition that brings together photography, video art and installation artists. The exhibition which opened on May 25th in the afternoon, counts with works by Enrique Rottenberg, Esterio Segura, Meira Marrero, José Angel Toirac, Octavio Marin (these three in a Meira & Toirac-Marin troika), Liudmila & Nelson, Jorge Otero, Beatriz Salas Santacana and Padraig Tarrant. With controversial works of an interactive nature in many cases, the topic of “utopia” appears as a common denominator, the nonexistent dreamt place which is visited through the subconscious and collective desire. The public may enter the works’ spaces, which is actually required in order to become an active participant of a historical moment and process, while being invited to join the reconstruction of utopia. The works, created for this occasion, and the title of the exhibition itself, overlap coherently with the curatorial axis of the Biennale, Between the idea and the experience, which refers to differences between concepts and realities. negra 13

La marcha / The march [Beatriz Sala Santacana]

Beatriz Sala Santacana (Havana, 1975) is a self-taught ceramist. La marcha /The march, an installation work with nine ceramic sculptures included in the exhibit, has a high symbolic nature and an expressive strength with which it communicates from multiple but well defined semantic levels. When everyone seems to go in one direction, supposedly the right, correct way, what happens to those who think they should go the other way? These ceramic sculptures are attacked by metal elements that cover their faces, their mouths, silencing their voices, leaving them mute, but granting them a stronger expression through their silence. 14 negra

DETAIL

Submarinos de mi pueblo / My people’s Submarines [Esterio Segura]

Submarinos de mi pueblo / My people’s Submarines, by Esterio Segura (Santiago de Cuba, 1970), is part of the series which the creator has been developing for quite some time now, of an anthropological, social and documentary topic. Another Cuba exists right beside the one we know, the same island but better. The promised utopian land, in order to reach to it you have to take a ride in the submarine. Enter your name if you want to participate. Jorge Otero (Havana, 1982) participates in Utopia with an untitled work that’s part to his series War Hero, in which the iconography of the Cuban Guajiro (peasant) is the protago-

nist of these photographs printed on canvas, of large format, and hand-woven. Hats, horses, machetes and muscles are weaved into the fabric of the image, to serve as a tribute to the hero of the Cuban countryside. The texture of this photo also refers to a Cuban peasant tradition, weaving the yarey fibers to create hats, furniture, elements that contribute to strengthen national identity from a rural visuality. Enrique Rottenberg (Tel Aviv, 1948) presents two photographic and installation works, La danza y Ciempiés / The dance and Centipede. The first, setup as a spiral within the exhibition space, invites the viewer to join this dance –even using

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La danza/The dance , DETAIL [Enrique Rottenberg]

one of the underpants left for this purpose- to the rhythm of a song by Serbian filmmaker and musician Emir Kusturica, Ovo Je Muski Svet (This is a ManÂ´s World / Este es un mundo de hombres). The invitation, even though at first seems to have a playful nature, actually unfolds into more serious and committed implications: that of mass consensual behavior, dancing to a song with incomprehensible lyrics which dictates the rhythm and pace. INSTALLATION

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INSTALLATION

CiempiĂŠs / Centipede, on the other hand, is composed by several women, who are bent and hidden under a blanket, under which we can only see their lower extremities, resembling the centipede that lends its name to this work. This insect with jointed legs and body has associative nerve centers, consequently exhibiting gregarious behavior. The topic of collectivity reappears here, which is predominant in all the works included in this exhibit, and of the collective consensus that unites the masses and directs them towards the same political and social objective. CiempiĂŠs / Centipede, DETAIL [Enrique Rottenberg]

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Posible emigrante / Potential Immigrant, DETAIL [Liudmila & Nelson]

Posible emigrante/Potential Immigrant is the proposal presented by Liudmila & Nelson (Liudmila Velasco, Moscú, 1969; Nelson Ramírez de Arellano, Berlin, 1969) in this exhibition, which continues with Hotel Havana’s conceptual and visual line. The collection composed of vinyl records with fragments of cities printed on them, a map of human movements over time, and a T-shirt which reads “Posible emigrante” talks about how human migrations have always been reshaping the global landscape. This idea contrasts with fact that wanting to emigrate was considered a sociopolitical stigma during a certain period in our country.

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Pirey en la memoria / Pirey in the memory, DETAIL [Meira &Toirac-Marin]

Three artists have united thought and effort to create this nostalgic and reflective piece. Meira Marrero (Havana, 1969), Jose Angel Toirac (Guantanamo, 1966) and Octavio Marin (Matanzas, 1964) present Pirey en la memoria / Pirey in the memory, an installation which is conceived as an “archaeological survey” carried out by the artists, where objects, used as human footprints, they tell their stories. In Pirey en la memoria the protagonists are the last Jabón Canado house, awarded in 1959, and a pushcart used by a “diver” to pick items out of the trash. Both objects show how the passage of time and a specific socio-economic situation have marked the present state of the owners behind these items.

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Castrobama II, [Padraig Tarrant]

A foreign artist participates in the exhibit, Padraig Tarrant, Ireland (1954). His work, which is the second edition of the one presented at the Tenth Havana Biennial in 2009, Castrobama II, is now reinterpreted from the new perspective of dialogue between the governments of Cuba and the United States. The piece also challenges his audience, making them take part in the dialogues that could benefit them. 20 negra

Utopia is undoubtedly a suggestive and controversial proposal, among the many that have been presented at the present Havana Biennial.

[Astrid Orive GarcĂa] Havana, 1986. BA in Art History.

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photoMANIA Skylights: Alejandro Alonso’s intrusive light [Antonio Enrique González Rojas]

ince most of the over forty photographs authored by Alejandro Emmanuel Alonso Estrella, presented at the exhibition Tragaluces / Skylights, mounted on the walls of the Museum of Art of Pinar del Rio (MAPRI), the author denies three-dimensionality and light as laws, but rather as axes and intrinsic to “normality”: state of affairs that spans beyond the “real” world, always tangentially covered by creators. He also figuratively obliterates the human entity, as a challenging renunciation of formal anthropocentrism, and of colonial perspective, which takes precedence over the infinitely rich surrounding iconosphere, which almost always subordinates to it, as his dominator and ultimate hierarch. In these works, the homo sapiens is engulfed by dusty roads (Pelegrinos / Pilgrims series), veiled by smoke (Evocación / Evocation), and by the spaces (Umbrales / Thresholds series). It’s rarefied, peculiarly, to the status of pure and unknown shadows barely felt. It’s absorbed by the kingdom of darkness as dense as tar, captured by the lens of the also documentary-maker and video-artist, for which photography, definitely, is darkness and not light. 1. Hiding seems to be Alonso’s pristine goal, and he completes this with the assistance of the shadows of Plato’s cave metaphor. The viewer’s hands are “tied-up” -the mandatory and the perceptive- due to the lack of light which reveals, and is bewildered at the frugality of signs, unable to make out shapes. He can barely glimpse at some recognizable segments, he barely guesses the situations, anonymous characters and misanthropic stories. Indeed, darkness, and the silhouette as its final incarnation, are the context and expression from which the artist weaves its logic, in which the form’s explicitness is denied, as a way from legitimize the removal (Otoño / Fall), the ambiguity (Discípulo / Disciple), and the mild suggestion as enshrined aesthetics and discourse, especially in the works grouped in Umbrales / Thresholds, in addition to those forming to the Sueños / Dreams series.

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Once conventional oppositions and hierarchies are inverted, light becomes an intruder, aggressively invasive, that cutting the bi-dimensional perfection (dimensionless, perhaps?) of planimetric darkness, in identifiable forms, like emergency handles for those who are burdened by so much unconquered darkness, where the All resides in the One. It’s indivisible by portions susceptible to western taxonomic logic, not concerned about pure absolutes pure or total abstractions. Allegories or parables of the eternal ambiguity among which human beings exist; or hagiography of the Holy Mystery, praised by Einstein as a great stimulus to life and the pursuit of knowledge? Light contaminates with its revealing rays (Amanecer/ Dawn of the Umbrales / Thresholds series) the achromatic primeval purity of Vacuum, in which the Universe will be created again, or the dissimilar universes made up by every one that dialogues with the pieces. The mystery of these visual stories is mitigated, which from the generic titles themselves, in turn appeal to the transitional (Ascensión / Ascension1 of the Sueños / Dreams series), to the marginal of the unknown dream regions where the human beings is not alive nor dead, but rather the very opposite: curled up right in the threshold of both states of existence, a resident of a third kingdom, equivocal for any bipolar orthodox conceptions, and governed by laws that steal the body from any rational analysis. The Umbrales / Thresholds and Pelegrinos / Pilgrims pieces also suggest a strange sense of movement, since transition always leads to a destination further beyond. It marks the path from point A to B, or maybe even to another dimension of A? It is not a perennial state, but rather pure movement, ergo energy. Doors, staircases, roads, serve as facilitators for the voyage/transformation between dimensions. These are cracks in the fences that commonly stand between the Wakefulness and Sleep, Life and Death, between Heaven and Hell, blocking any type communication, Or of integration? There’s Dante, who alive walked among the land of the dead and told his story...

photoMANIA

Libertador / Liberator [Alejandro Alonso]

Ascención / Ascension [Alejandro Alonso]

Without distancing themselves excessively from the rest of the exhibit, Apóstol y Libertador / Apostle and Liberator are two more autonomous works, where Alonso seems have appropriated the usual Packaging concept-attitude, adapting it to his conceptions of removal, of anti-figuration, the relativity of meanings by concealment. At the same time, he goes on to discourse about the estrangement and dissolution of the once (and still by edict) sacred icons, and other entities that are also obliterated, but this time by routine and libelous tautology.

lines with a sharp pen, merciless with the smoothness of the skin now reduced to pure wrinkles. These people who dream, both asleep (Mamá duerme y Ascensión / Mom sleeps and Ascension, both of the Sueños/Dreams series) and awake (Insomnio II / Insomnia II, of the Umbrales/ Thresholds series; Anunciación / Annunciation El camino/ The road) are also transitional entities, curled up on the border between two existences.

2. The only faces unveiled in Alonso’s photographs are the elderly’s, wrinkled scrolls where life has written countless

Some titles are not for free, which as Anunciación / Annunciation transcend the mere ingenious nexus between concept-event and composition. The old lady sees “something” that enlightens her; beside her rests a worn staircase, by which maybe the angel with the good news of

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photoMANIA

El camino / The road [Alejandro Alonso]

an extracorporeal trip may descend. Perhaps the corroded wooden ladder itself is the revelation that presents itself to her. Ascensión / Ascension probably tries to capture the beautiful moment when a dream lubricates the disembodiment of the soul from a body barely sensed among the folds of the bed sheets and the veil of mosquito netting. By virtue of his framing and composition, another staircase emerges from the body to “somewhere” in the heights of the shot. And the third sign, which is the anonymous child in the distance, who could well be the rejuvenated soul running free, a little disoriented by the new circumstances. The old woman in Insomnio II / Insomnia II no longer sleeps, since perhaps she is living in an eternal dream which for 24 negra negra

her is the “reality” of our shot, from which she’ll awake soon, to be found in other areas, which Alonso has allowed the privilege of seeing through narrow trapdoors that are his skylights; while we realize that we’re (voluntarily) handcuffed and crouched with our backs to the entrance of Plato’s cave.

(1) This photograph, and the one entitled El camino, are shots from his recent documentary La despedida (2014), produced by Alonso as graduation thesis at the International School of Film and Television (EICTV) of San Antonio de los Baños.

photoMANIA The object as consolation: Yomer Montejo’s photo-radiographs [Antonio Enrique González Rojas]

lthough science has abundantly described the nature of the rays known in centraleastern Europe as Röntgenstrahlen - that is, Röntgen-Rays, most of the world continues calling them X-Rays, a classification that still refers to the pristine unknown which led their nineteenth century pre-discoverers (Crookes and Tesla) and discoverer (Röntgen). Since the preceptive effect of radiographs, despite their common use, especially in medical procedures, still is of amazement, wonder, mystery, and as disturbing as witnessing the dissection of a human body. These are the “sculptures” of the German scientist and artist Gunther von Hagens, which through the process of Plastination, reveal and eternalize the unbearable beauty emanating from a flayed human body, dismantled of all of its organic mechanics. 1. The phrase “look inside oneself” loses any metaphorical appearance before the Hagens’ pieces and likewise before the works, perhaps qualified as photo-radiographic, by young Cuban artist Yomer Montejo, which grouped under the title El objeto como consuelo (The object as consolation), occupied gallery space at the “Fresa y Chocolate” Cultural-Cinematographic Center from March 31st to April 30th, 2015. 1 Now, unlike the stark sincerity of the body revealed under the force of a scalpel, the images taken with X-rays, which Yomer chose, -that is, far away from violence and invasive manipulations-, refer to a kind of recent and more subtle voyeurism, from which both the scientist and the artist, scrutinize processes and essences in living, acting beings. They look beyond the borders of “privacy”, symbolically tearing off the kitsch veils with which individuality dresses up in order be able to interact socially. In his pieces, Montejo doesn’t abandon the human organism as a figurative and discursive axis, but follows an

unconscious principle established by the first image obtained by Röntgen himself in 1896 – his wife’s hand adorned with two rings as contrasting elements: artificial entities, soulless, solid, full of nothing and mixes it most times with “dead” objects, as common as terrible in his new and oneiric dimension. Do not forget that fear is greater if that that has been altered is more familiar, and the transmutation of its nature is more discrete. Obtaining in this manner a very peculiar and surreal iconmythology (Meñique, Quinqué, Manusa), which doesn’t lack highly ironic vignettes (Vigilante, Herramienta perfecta, Discurso y Proyecto fallido), and naively ludic in some moments (En espera de fin de año y Coco timba), in which you notice a creator who is discovering the potentials of this technique. New feelings are generated, new fears, and no less critical, and which become universal such as religion itself: incarnated in Cuba by a symbol which has become cultural, and so shared by all as the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre, recreated in Se abre el telón, one of the most successful and powerful pieces of the show. The sacred statue of the Cuban version of the Lamb’s immaculate mother reveals a puppet’s interior, where the hand suggests manipulation. Faith is discovered as a construct of an intelligent species that has created exoteric gods in their own image and likeness, as primal and poetic explanations for the phenomena that has overcome him throughout all of his existence on the planet. If the Virgin is assumed to be most complex symbol of the Cuban nation and nationality, Se abre... generates profound reflection regarding the role of hidden powers behind such strong symbols such as these religious ones; regarding the “staging” involved in any political structure, whose propaganda initiatives tend to sanctify the ruling power at all costs. In fact, one of the oldest (and still enduring under subtler signs) forms of legitimation of rulers, was to present them as having a direct relationship with the deities on duty, or as fruit of superhuman determinism.

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photoMANIA

Se abre el telón, 2011 [Yomer Montejo]

2. The hand, cardinal in determining the “human condition”, stands out as one of Montejo’s ideo-aesthetic axis, much more than merely being an honorable tribute to the aforementioned pioneering image taken by Röntgen. Since radiographs refer to the search for secret essences, Yomer’s hands are guiding concepts, behavioral axis: the hand as manipulation (Se abre...); the hand as a manager of “civilization” (Quinqué); the hand as action and resistance to divergent ideas (no title, in which a skull bites a hand); the hand as a monstrosity (Manusa); the hand as a symbolic -and folkloric- complement of the very Cuban “muela”, in order to achieve ambitions (Herramienta...). Now, the expressive balance of El objeto... slightly stumbles due to its irregular installation, where the common “light boxes” - ideal for assessing radiographs- are combined with conventional framed prints; the much more subdued brightness of the latter pieces lowers their hierarchy 26 negra negra

Coco timba, 2012 [Yomer Montejo]

regarding the ones privileged by the luminous frames; it deprives them of some strength and the general strangeness of this show where, once again, pragmatic creation is transmuted into symbolic creation and the fences between science and art are diluted in a common ambition to clear the mysteries of existence.

(1) This exhibition was part of the 14 Muestra Joven ICAIC (inaugurated on March 31st), and several of the pieces were awarded as prizes to the winners of the competition.

[Antonio Enrique González Rojas] Cienfuegos, 1981. BA in Journalism. Novelist and art critic. His texts have been published in El Caimán Barbudo, Noticias de Arte Cubano, Cine Cubano, among other Cuban and foreign magazines and anthologies.

photoMANIA Young looks at the XII Havana Biennial [Carlos Gámez]

o assess the Art events that coexist with the major ones, or that have actually emerged, or that are based on the magnitude of their invitations, it’s imperative to focus on the young. The novelty of their look and the expectations that can still be discerned from their proposals is the counterpart to the depleted interest of many of the artists who have been in participating for a long time in these major events. The angle from which the themes are adopted, together with their own approach and the meaning given to their works, make evident in the novice’s perception the effort to recreate what he has always dreamt. Hence, the pieces presented, in his first intent to participate, go towards meticulousness, deep searches, and personal issues. The exhibition Mi ofrenda es tu caza / My offering is your game, collateral to the XII Havana Biennial, which opened at La Madriguera gallery as a space for reflection on the new bifid skills that contemporary individuals have turned into their credo, upheld its call to AHS members as its main protagonists and among these, especially the photographers. Raciel del Amo Medina, one of the exhibiting artists, with two works that show the interest he devotes to documentary work as a reference for reality, as proof of small moments, sometimes amazing, but totally solid before the camera’s image. Two pieces cover the exhibition space creating an illusion of perpetuum for the viewer. The exhibited works have the great care of an artist of forms, a creator who first thinks of values, measuring the light intensity, composing, and only then conceptual looking at the image, who many times, once the photo is made, its background snatches the co-creator’s glance with ease. Raciel del Amo’s photographs are included, referentially within the trends of the new artists sedu-

[Raciel del Amo Medina]

ced by the pleasure of capturing as many close-ups as possible. A sewing machine, a rag doll, an old woman resting during her nap, and the memory, which is almost imperceptible, announces the arrival of old age, bring the photographer to the exhibition at La Madriguera with the thesis of accurate forms that support the beautiful cruelty of his secretly stolen fragments. Because nothing is more intimate than the caressing touch of a lost childhood, a loved one, an invisible granddaughter. Raciel del Amo’s photos come to position themselves at a confessional moment. The proof that he has come to the hunt without his crossbow with arrows, are on the walls of the gallery as a great trophy. Two photos and one subject, a victim, a voyeur. During the XII Havana Biennial many exhibits intersect, new approaches to rewriting ancient tecnés will always be tempting, although preference for everything vintage is currently in fashion. There is one certainty in the youngster’s offerings: on target, exoticism, experimentation, transgression. negra 27 negra

photoMANIA Glamour and Decay Judgments. The big kiss [Yenny Hernández Valdés]

hotography, while being a discursive strategy that presupposes that circumstances are captured truthfully: the eye that sees everything, can drag us into a kind of conceptual limbo that requires arduous hermeneutical effort by the receiver. This is crucial in the process of completing the image: the gestation of the idea, its creative projection and the dialogue with its audience. Hence one of the handiest resources for this is simulation as an aesthetic-visual language of artists.

In these times, there are many photographers who assume these transgressive positions as a dose of originality and conceptual insight that fluctuates within their modus operandi. A willingness to revisit, redefine and manipulate – both digitally and thematically – of works that dominate current artistic events. Indeed, this sprouts from the works of Javier A. Bobadilla exposed during the last month of April on the Black Wall (La Pared Negra) of the popular Fábrica de Arte Cubano, titled Glamour and Decay.

[Raciel del Amo Medina]

[Carlos Gámez] Bayamo, 1987. BA in Art History. Curator and art critic. Collaborates with several publications including Noticias Artecubano, Esquife, Cubanow. Currently he studies at the Superior Institute of Arts.

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Recurrence to simulation works perfectly to discourse on hackneyed notions of appearances, of trivial absolutisms that define the evolution of the contemporary subject. Allusions and conceptual reformulations are the germinative tensors of this exhibition. Idea and shape, form and content, fashion and decadence, everything responds to an precise marriage in Bobadilla’s pieces. In the background of these works, in which a visual taster recreates at will, with a swarming pastiche of rebellious attitude that drags us to question everything: from the chromaticism achieved in these pieces and the adopted positions, up to the sema that sustains the work itself. In this young photographer’s exhibition different interpretations regarding ideological and cultural metamorphosis of the concerned individual transpire. Of faces whose looks sentence and suggest, of presumptuous fragmented bodies that speak and other ones that smother their own physicality, it is in his aesthetic and conceptual essay that Bobadilla proposes to circumvent the accommodative insipidness of certain budgets and to bet on backing frontal nonconformity.

photoMANIA

[Javier A. Bobadilla]

Glamour and Decay works as the crack that accumulates sharpwitted humor and parody through visual and textual consumption. The connection between image and text favors the completion of the necessary hermeneutical circle. It is a procedural tactic consciously carried out by the photographer in order to move among the iconic and the revolutionary, between statism and dynamism, between glamor and decadence.

idea is clearly perceived throughout this sample. Then, praise is deserved by the successful assimilation and projection of opposites -Glamour and Decay- under one curatorial criterion. Then let’s brand it as the realization of the “big kiss”, the high point of connection between different budgets. This is yet another bet on which the aesthetic-conceptual quality achieved by art photography of these new times breathes happily.

Coming from the land of digital image manipulation, Javier A. Bobadilla offers the possibility of rethinking and of rethinking ourselves as subjects as overwhelmed by an externally glamourized fruit which houses a mass of pure decadence inside. His attachment to synthesis, to formal structure, to light, to color, to the

[Yenny Hernández Valdés] Havana, 1992. BA in Art History, Faculty of Arts and Letters of the University of Havana.

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photoMANIA For the 90 years of Raul Corrales [Claudio Sotolongo]

he images selected for the exhibition in honor of the 90th anniversary of the birth of the great Cuban photographer Raul Corrales at the Fototeca de Cuba are an excellent preamble to the Havana Biennial In the words of its director Nelson Ramirez de Arellano, Corrales is an essential part of twentieth century Cuban photography. His images have already marked several generations of photographers and still attract attention for his great mastery. From the famous Mambí cavalry up to the images of fishermen, Corrales documents the country’shistory without sweetening it, in black and white, he gets close to reality in order to capture its essence. He doesn’t try to embellish, or decorate, but his images are most certainly aesthetically accomplished. Regarding its composition and lighting, La siesta is a very moving picture. Corrales emphasizes on the subject as the protagonist of historical and social processes, and for more than 60 years his work as a photojournalist earned him a place among those who bear witness to reality. In 1996 he was awarded the Plastic Arts National Prize, a just recognition to the work of a lifetime. However, the artist himself leaves testimony about his work and his modesty when he says: “The Revolution gave me the opportunity to be a witness of events that are now history”. This exhibition is testimony to the fact that he not only documented these events, but that he also did it with a sharp eye.

[photography to the exposition]

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photoMANIA Dancing for the Camera

he job of a photojournalist is a great responsibility for those who practice it. Especially in contemporary times that we use images as a narrative resource for any story. From war to cultural events, a photojournalist must also capture defining, timeless moments, since his images contribute to form opinion, educate tastes and instill values. The job of a photojournalist not only involves knowledge of photo techniques, but also in depth knowledge of the cultural and social situations in his context. Most of the attention will be paid to conflict photography, the desolation of war, forced displacement andmigration conflicts as recurrent themes. Another side of the job is the one that focuses on artistic culture; much less glamorous, even though it sounds contradictory, than taking photographs of areas devastated by famine, dance photography is a real specialty, with technical and aesthetic requirements that few photographers manage to acquire. In El espíritu de la danza/The spirit of the dance, we can see images taken by Alexis Rodríguez which show the complexity of the world of this type of photography. Except for a few snapshots of Alicia Alonso, the rest are presentations of different companies: Litz Alfonso Ballet, the National Ballet of Cuba, Los hijos del director /The director’s children, in shows with different choreographicbudgets. Alexis’ images approach the essence of dance, movement. Even though he takes advantage of the breaks to capture the dancers’ expressions, in some of the over forty photographs on display in the Casa de Mexico,he captures the grace of the dance, the flow of bodies under the influence of music or silence. Alexis’ journalistic work only intends to document the act of dancing, seeing this exhibition at the Casa de Mexico allows us to look at photojournalismfrom a distance and revalue it as the immortal image that it hopes to become.

[photography to the exposition]

[Claudio Sotolongo] Havana, 1982. Designer of the UH Editorial of the Faculty of Arts and Letters, and professor of the EFCH.

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Gabriel Uchida interview

Image like word: A shutter release in the sense of death [Yailuma Vรกzquez]

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Gabriel Uchida

Referring to the duplicity of image and word the Slovak poet and philosopher Iztok Geister Planmen said: “In classical painting, the image is conceived as word... in paintings of modern times, the image is considered image, but actually, it is word”.1 Visual arts in general, and among these, photography, amplify the meanings, since what is, what you see, and the words which so many times generate misunderstandings are generally absent. This makes visual work become tautological, since it is self-explanatory; and, as Igor Zabel writes, in a certain sense, there is nothing you can say about it. “Everything in the work is visible, and it itself is nothing more than what’s visible”.2 This phrase certainly holds great irony, since the visible cannot be measured, determined and therefore has, infinite readings-meanings. Meeting the young Brazilian photographer Gabriel Uchida moved me deeply. Accustomed to questioning the monolithic status of any truth, I was set to dismantle, at least in my head, his political discourse. Because, to what extent is an artist indeed capable of causing social change? His photos speak of equality and violence; they choose a road much less traveled by journalism in his country. He keeps away both from tabloid photography as well as from Red chronicles, although he addresses the same issues. Best known for his photographic project as Fototorcida, he explores the common path of football, from a look inside the stadium, from the characters that inhabit it, the same ones as always, people he has come to know by dint of coexistence, because as he himself has said, his main goal is to humanize them, allowing them access to power through the lens of his camera. Because they’re there, they definitely exist; they have a life, a story and they deserve to be taken into account. “I’m not interested in taking a nice picture”, he finally said. At the time, I couldn’t imagine him, yet, completely exposed behind the barrel of a loaded shotgun, firing, in the same direction as death, the shutter of his camera. How did you discover that photography could become your means of expression? Actually, I never thought I would do photography. When I was in college I preferred film. My training at the Catholic University of Santos, was in journalism. Afterwards, photography came as a natural thing, I started to work and find out what things I liked to do, I bought a camera and started reading everything I could. Whenever I can I read something about photography. Every time I start a project, at least, I study for one or two weeks. I do research on the Internet, on the subject, what other photographers have already done. And all that’s before I take a picture, before taking the camera in my hands. This is important, because this way I can have a different vision and create something that others haven’t yet. Your work is basically structured based on photojournalism. Why did you choose this path as your individual realization? And, of course, why football? With my best-known project, Fototorcida3 I try to do something different. Sure, I’m from Brazil and there everybody talks about football. However, most of the journalistic and photographic work on this subject is very similar; all the photos are very similar. In a rather desert territory I began to take pictures of fans only. And I don’t even look at the ball and players; often I don’t even know who won, or even the names of the players. Many people think that because I work this topic, I know technical things about the sport, and the truth is that that’s not the case. I like football, of course, but for me is much more than just a sport, it’s a culture. And a culture doesn’t have just one path; it can’t be that in a culture as widespread as a football in Brazil, photo-

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graphers only choose the issue of the ball, the players and goals. There are many more things that are worth studying, reviewing and recording. The fact that you prefer not individualize the player who within the sports circle becomes a celebrity, has other meanings. Do you think your photography has an inherently political discourse? Although many people don’t see, my work has a strong political background. For example, in Brazil the fans suffer discrimination and are victim to a lot of prejudices. Public opinion describes them as hooligans, bandits and marginal. And sure, of course there’s some of that, but not all of them. Staying so close to fans is standing in their favor. I stay with the people, this is the message. I reflect on Helio Oiticica’s work, a contemporary artist who defends the idea that art should create relationships. He built a house in which you had to walk without shoes, in order to feel the different textures of the floors. This idea inspired my work. If I’m in the stadium next to the fans and not in the press room, or in the spaces meant for the press, somehow I think that a different relationship is transmitted by the photograph. Nowadays in Brazil they say that football has become a modern sport. What does this mean? Well, they have created new distinctions within the stadium. Before it was not like this. The stadium was a real area of freedom, everyone was there, one beside the other, it didn’t matter if you were white, black, yellow, if you had money or not, if you lived in a rich or a poor neighborhood. That’s changing. Now football is just a business and, therefore, is moving people away from the stadium, raising ticket prices. The crowds seem to become a symbol within your photography, either on the way to the football stadium or inside it, a topic which is also closely linked to violence. What other issues do you link them to, and what do you expect to convey with them? The theme of the crowds is a little bit hard to explain. These crowds are groups of fans, which in Brazil are of two types, the normal ones, who to go to the stadium with their families and those who have been called “organized”. The latter have a lot of problems with the police and are very criminalized. I use football to address other issues, such as violence and police repression, which in Brazil is tremendous. And this situation often goes unnoticed by the press. I have a very funny story about this. It turns out that some time ago I was called at home to alert me about a protest that was going to take place at two in the morning in front of the stadium, because one of the most important teams was losing a lot, and in Brazil football is like religion, you can’t always lose. That’s why the fans had made twelve crosses, like from a cemetery, with the names of the players and their year of birth and the year corresponding to that day (2014). Afterwards the police arrived and those who were there fled. I had the news because I was the only one with the information and photos. So I published some images and a bit of the story. The next day a lot of journalists from the official media started calling me, none of them asked me about the information –how many crosses, people, the motives–, everyone wanted to know if I could send them the photos for free. What happened then? Well, all the media in Brazil from the largest to the smallest wrote notes about the event, but they were all riddled with lies. Journalists are lazy. Part of my job is to investigate this subject, the most dangerous groups. I’m independent because I don’t like working with the press in Brazil, because they often publish lies. I began to have many views, in my work within the social networks, because people thought I had a different, closer understanding of football fans.

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Gabriel Uchida

In some photographs it appears that you’re particularly interested in tattoos, in which you combine a visual discourse with words. Are you particularly interested in showing the duality of both discourses or does the presence of tattoos have other meanings? Tattoos have a historical link with marginality. These characters are very well known in Brazil, because they’ve spent a lot of time in jail; even if today have no problems with the law. With these photos I show the violence of football, but in a different manner. I don’t show the fight. These aren’t the classic tabloid photos. In fact in some of them I don’t show their faces, because this person represents thousands of others. Many of them even have other marks that aren’t tattoos but scars from fights. This series is called Los tipos más duros del fútbol brasileño/The toughest guys in Brazilian football, and it’s in the finals of a major press award in Brazil. With these photos much more than documenting the violence, I pretend to understand it, things that have happened to someone’s life in order to get to this point. Because I don’t believe that people are just good or bad. The American photojournalist Bill Gentile, who covered for a period, the conflicts in Nicaragua during the 80, commented to his students at La Casa de las Americas, where he offered some lectures in 2010, that he began in journalism as a writer, but that very often his editor censored his news reports. And for this reason he decided to use photography, because the image offered him a much broader opportunity to avoid censorship. Do you think this could be transferred to your work? Sure, but the truth is that there is also censorship with photography. I have been forced by the police to delete photos from my camera. This has also happened to a friend, Andre Caramante, who works on social and human rights issues from journalism, and discovered corrupt cop stories and was threatened with death. So he had no choice but to leave the country for a while, just because he was doing his job. We suffer censorship of the media, because of their relations with businessmen, and also by the police and government. But still, photography is easier. The story can be told in a less direct way. What elements do you consider essential for a good photojournalism? I need to tell a story, that people can understand. Leave a message. I have to take a stand; as a student I constantly heard that journalists had to be neutral, but I don’t think this should be so. I think taking a stand on any matter is more sincere, it’s impossible not to have your own opinion, in the same way that there’s no single version of history. For me the whole story of impartiality is a lie. I prefer to say that I have my own opinion, and I can include it in my work. My message always has the intention of humanizing the characters; in my story a fan is as important as a player. Do you think that your photos can be defined as narratives, that they themselves can tell a particular story? I think so. Not if you only see one photo, if you see the whole picture of my work you then understand that it is all about one issue and social conflict. If you look at it all together it’s the same story, a story of violence. I’m now working a little in Cuba and I’m look for stories that are outside Vedado and Centro Habana, beyond these spaces that are like parks for tourists. I’m looking for Cuban reality stories that are also in other parts, in Santo Suarez, Matanzas, Cienfuegos.

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Do you think photojournalism has benefited from the use of digital photography? What would be the pros and cons of its use in your work? I don’t prefer any specific camera or lens, or equipment that costs of thousands of dollars. I think of work the work that I want to do and how to do it, then I think of the camera. For example, in Ethiopia, where I stayed for a week presenting an exhibition of my work at the Brazilian embassy, I also tried to transmit a message different from the one traditionally given about Africa, its aboriginal people, the animals, the land, wild Africa. I also wanted to talk about the reality on the street, in the city, which is very lively and where it seems that the movement of people, rickshaws, and cars never stops. I wanted to show that movement, but without resorting to video, so I chose a very cheap analog camera, Lomography supersampler, that allowed me to approach this reality. Because this camera takes four pictures in the same position, four shots that are marked by an equal time interval, i.e. a sequence of photos determined by real time, not by editing nor by my head. And I did it with a camera that does not even have a viewer to see. I just choose the stage, and I think that I got much closer to reality. Photographers have a fetish with cameras, I don’t care about them. When do you consider yourself satisfied with a piece that you’ve created? I’m never satisfied. Whenever I look at what I produced at the beginning, I always think about what I could have done differently. All the time I go back to works that I’ve previously created, even though I know they’re completed. Now, in Cuba, I took some photos of Santeria and one of them had a doll. I did not quite understand what the doll meant, after my friend explained it to me, I realized I hadn’t taken the photo properly and I returned to the place, walking under the scorching sun, to take the photo from another angle. As you know this magazine is published by the School of Creative Photography of Havana, where a fairly diverse group of young and not so young photographers are formed, from your professional experience what advice could you give them. That they try to create their own work, and always study. Finding the story is the most important thing. Talk to people and be aware of what is going in order to find work of your own. Do work that tells a story and leaves a message.

(1) Quote by Igor Zabel: “Art within the limits of the visible”, Desiderio Navarro (sel. y trans.) Denken Pensée Thought Myíl… E-zine de Pensamiento Cultural Europeo, Centro Teórico Cultural Criterios, Havana, pp. 236-247. (2) Ibídem, p. 339. (3) The term “torcida” in Portuguese means fan.

[Yailuma Vázquez] La Habana, 1982. BA of Arts. Professor and editor in the Faculty of Arts and Letters of the University of Havana.

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Gabriel Uchida

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Gabriel Uchida

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Gabriel Uchida

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Novel In order to touch the sky. Harold Ferrer [Haydee Oliva Valle]

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The city has no need of either sun or moon, or of any light Revelations 21:23 Everything is but a sign. Goethe

Elohim is the Hebrew term with which God is first mentioned in Genesis. Creator of creators would be more or less a close translation. In the beginning God created heaven and earth (...) And saw that it was good. We’ve all heard that. Not all of us believe it, but this isn’t a theological dissertation. Faith is much more complex than the actual understanding of the creative act. It means believing in what we cannot see or fully understand, at least to some extent. Harold Ferrer is a photographer in which I have faith. A creation that supports him, Harold doesn’t put my skeptical inclinations to a test. Graduated from the EFCH, he holds many awards, exhibitions and publications of his work. 2014 was crucial in shaping his curriculum: Provincial Salon Grand Prize “Ciudad sin límite”. Commemoration of the 495 anniversary of the city; First Prize XV International Salon of Religious Art, Santiago de Cuba; First Prize II Edition of the Artistic Lens competition organized by the National Heritage Office and the Cuban Association of Architects and Engineers; and his latest award so far this year is the second prize at the Alvaro Noboa Ponton Digital Photography International Competition, organized by the Luis Noboa Naranjo Museum, Guayaquil, Ecuador. He is also a graduate of the Painting Workshop under Rocio Garcia at the San Alejandro Academy, and the UNEAC Photography Workshop under El Chino Arcos, he started studying law at the University of Havana, but didn’t finish. He came to photography by winding roads. First a varied working universe, second painting, photography third, which in his own words, has quickly become the center of his time and effort. Harold is a man of few words but many images. Photography, in general, seems to flow as a natural act for him. No drama, no existential crisis, and no shouting; until, keeping the biblical reference: a photo is made. His images do not require a semiotic torrential or high and profound interpretive speculation1, as a certain semiotic would say they are brave visual surfaces. They are what we see: an image, its referential universe, the context and the circumstances that have determined it, and the blessed factor X that turns them into art. Until now, the bulk of the of H. Ferrer’s photographs were part of the best and highest of domestic and foreign documentary photography: Andre Kertesz, Andreas Feininger, Dorothea Lange, Gabriele Basilico and Cuba’s Raul Cañivano, are some of his main references, as the author himself states. The truth is that references aside, as a consumer of all kinds and types of photography: Documentary, creative, abstract, creative documentary, referential abstract, selfies, etc., etc., Harold seems endowed with the good fortune of great documentary photographers: the right time and place. You could almost say that where it sets his eye/lens, he gets a photo. Ciudad de Fe /City of Faith has been the series on which the photographer has worked the most. With a very particular vision of the rite universe, this is a project that aims to (re) place us in front of a visual universe, watered down and infinitely re-formed by the reality of our culture, from its mediating position between the divine and the receiver. This is a very particular set of photographs, the preponderance of religious elements overlaps (1) The tools used for the analysis of any work of art are chosen by the person who analyzes.

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La bendici贸n / The blessing, from the seriesCiudad de Fe / City of Faith

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Fe / Faith, from the series Ciudad de Fe / City of Faith

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Novel

with a more complex system in which belief and theatricality, hope and myth coexist. Harold tosses us some truth: is our identity found in the succulence formed by the union of the human lineages which have dissolved and been re-formed in the island, as well as in the Virgin behind an amalgam of candles and dreams, which more than an expression of religious belief is an expression of an identity which is determined by the symbolic dimension of things. In a clear attempt to re-dimension todays Havana. “I’m looking to generate visual impact that relies on documentary photography, using environments laden of dramatics, high-contrast images not only regarding values but also in their content, which, next to black and white, create a poetics that I feel is my own, which lets me establish a relationship with the viewer who is also enriched by the different media experimentation”.2

One of the constants in the work of this visual producer is the growing need for media experimentation. His search does not end with the photo printing’s flat surface, but rather installations -in their broadest understanding- play a fundamental role in it, coming to form part of a creative universe that we predict will be complex and more complete. Human beings and their conflicts, the city as a unifying element, as a space for contact and multiple projections might be some of the links that we find in the still early creation of Ferrer. However, I have a very personal certainty that the best of the artist’s work is yet to come. He recently he collaborated with the Quinqué project, becoming part of a recent boost to this project’s life, which functions as a meeting place of an important part of young Cuban photography. The story that we write in capital letters, appears to be one of his latest interests, as he has announced in his last series. He has abando(2) Interview with the photographer

Testamento / Testament, from the series Ciudad de Fe / City of Faith

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Geetaway

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VÍa crucis

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ned the more traditional forms of documentary image, in a playful instinct to rewrite a story that can be told about a chessboard. Harold doesn’t disappoint us. The result: a kordian Che, looking to the future featureless. Speechless. ‘Bara’ is the first word that appears in the Bible. The closest translation would be ‘create from nothing’. Create heaven and earth from nothing. To the expulsion from Paradise, we must add the eternal impossibility of creating from nothing, as everything is already created. Harold Ferrer seems to be placed with maturity that shows in his tranquility slightly turning his back to creative impossibility. Carrying with decades of history of documentary photography which support his work, he also puts to paid to the denial of the original, so widely used by art dilettantes. Harold doesn’t invent anything new, he just creates. Chess

[Haydee Oliva Valle] Pinar del Río, 1990. BA in Art History. Professor of the Faculty of Arts and Letters, and of the EFCH.

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Photo by NYC 1950:

photo Havana logbook

TEXT Julienne L贸pez Hern谩ndez photography Juan Manuel Cruz del Cueto

Central Park

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uring this month of May airs of biennial are breathed all over Havana. Havana celebrates the twelfth edition of the most important visual arts event in Cuba and is therefore dresses up to receive in its exhibition halls the national and international artists who, amid ideas and experience, shall exhibit their works searching for an impeccable confrontation with the public. The streets of Havana shall become the ideal scenario to, from a position an irreverent position towards traditional exhibition spaces, achieve that goal of modernism of bring art closer to life. The city of Havana, which will become a large outdoor gallery, shall be the subject of interventions and representations, subsequently turned into the frenzied focus of many creators, it shall stand once again as a theme or topic of particular interest of all of the guest artists. Havanaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s framework as an excuse for visual arts in Cuba has been revisited by many Cuban artists, from topics such as insularity, the urban imaginary or urban anthropology. Using dissimilar aesthetic languages the city has been appreciated from utopian, dystopian and heterotopic perspectives; the truth is that each one of them has encouraged a wide range of looks, both from inside as well as from outside the island. Remarkably fusing both perspectives, Juan Manuel Cruz del Cueto (Havana, 1985) configures his hometown based on his series NYC 1950: Havana logbook, which visualizes a space full of political connotations in the Cuban context. Amid the process of restoration of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States, the artist

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understands his city by closely complementing it with the city of New York. The truth is that the acceptance of such a series could be complex, even problematical; but therein lays one of its values: question preset knowledge structures and with a pendular motion, move between the two waters, without having the need to emphasize on political issues. The artist proposes to play with the concepts of cultural globalization, with the idea of transnational, with the underlying discourse that persists in contemporary Latin America and the Caribbean art, of overcoming that identity representation neurosis which has pursued or tried to rescue the cultures of developing countries for such a long time, in an attempt not to lose the autochthonous, which was really essential in the early twentieth century. Thus Juan Manuel operates with categorical pairs yours/mine, center/periphery, in/out, etc., with a structural vision that serves his discourse well; since even though somehow it has already been surpassed by theory, it results very timely in order to explain the phenomenon of neocolonialism in this case. The photographer detects where these categories operate and makes the deep and repressive hidden power structure visible. However, it does not deny the other in order to affirm oneself, but the other complements a national culture, without entailing a forced cultural invasion that threatens our identity; but rather as part of a process of antropophagy, we have eaten, digested and incorporated it into our cultural system. Consequently, the artist does not try to change the scales -which would be the repetition of a power-structuralist discourse-, but prefers to have its components dialogue in a more unprejudiced manner.

Hotel New York

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Big Apple

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With this exhibit a criteria of artistic legitimacy is defended in a different manner as to how our avant-garde Cuban or Latin American artists did it; because no iconography loaded with stereotypes with which historically Latin American cultures have been identified has been used, but rather the artist uses analogies and an inclusive discourse. He recognizes in the other, not that â&#x20AC;&#x153;imposed - copy and pasteâ&#x20AC;? model, but rather tries to point out the simultaneity of two cultures that were able, in the same timeframe to dialogue and exchange information through a highly flexible border. Therefore the tools of postmodern artistic language as well as those of appropriation, quotation and inter-textuality serve the artist; becoming effective means, from the perspective of art, of breaking that obvious tension between Cuban and American culture, historically reinforced by a political discourse that has shaped our imaginary of the other, and the other sees us; all from a simplified view of a cultural construction that has permeated or contaminated fields beyond politics. The truth is that this border has progressively expanded due to the increasing globalization; for that reason the artist has taken certain moles to anchor both cultures with the titles of his pieces. This is given by the recurrence by the linguistic level of the work â&#x20AC;&#x201C;i.e. the title- of formerly stereotyped signs, which visually

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fracture, since what is observed is not really the quoted building/place, but rather what for the artist would be its counterpart in Cuba. He operates with iconic signs for a self-legitimation from the well-known periphery, trying to get inserted into the center through the use of analogies. The importance of the titles may be derived from all this, as an anchoring mechanism with the other reference, it is the work’s constitutive linguistic element which establishes connections and weaves an affirmative discourse regarding Cuban culture. It is not in vain that these have been expressed in English, but rather accentuates the ambiguity given through the linguistic text. Certainly art, with its ability to free objects from their usual canons, gives a sense of the object as a vision and not as recognition. Precisely in this exhibit the objects’ recognition is fractured, since it has been named with another description and with not the one by which it’s commonly known. While the photographer stops for an anthropological look at architecture, he in turn creates a certain kind of information noise by placing two texts -linguistic and visual- which during the logical thinking process function as nonsense. That’s why he offers a nontraditional vision of the object, beyond its simple referential recognition, betting on its de-familiarization.

Farm market

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PHOTO The pieces then become temporary hinges that open space for the other, and with this flexibility offer a different way of seeing the Cuban city, of rethinking it; this time not from a dependent position, underdeveloped or inferior; but rather to reconsider this polarity under a certian self-relocation, a new reading of history, now from the perspective of whom has been researched and not that of the traditional Western historian. He revisits the increasingly flexible identity issue, since we are more multicultural, because in the end... where does the definition of the other begin, and where does the I start? How rigid is this border? How valid is it to increasingly accentuate the differences when the world is going the opposite way, towards interconnections and multi-polarity?

French Town

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NYC Ray

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It would be inadmissible in contemporary times to look at Cuba from its clichés and stereotypes –which also identify it- that’s why in this series he bets on a critically spirited photography, of a more existential cut, trying to leave behind politicized readings. The impact that it’s intended to cause is loaded with certain frivolity or cynicism, a feature that is being increasingly emphasized in contemporary art. The photographer has positioned in mainstream art an ancient problem, this time viewed from architectural and scenic photography. While working with a high level of iconicity representing insignias of Cuban architecture, he exploits the ambiguity resource given with the title. Then the viewer is forced to give meaning to the works, to cover the spatial ellipsis established between the visual references –architecture-, and linguistic reference –titles of the works. Precisely in completing these indetermination areas is that the pieces become active, demanding from the viewer an aesthetic realization which will update them again and again. negra 67

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This interactivity between work and the viewer that the artist tries to facilitate is enhanced by a formal treatment of the works, which makes it easy for the viewer to have a flash back to the 50s of the past century. We refer to work done with the piecesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; phonemes, that is, with their plastic values, in such a manner that they contribute to the message he wants to convey. The photographer, knowing the high levels of expression offered by black and white combinatorial work, as well as their ability to make the viewer travel through time to a past of non-color photography, use this in all of his two-dimensional works. Furthermore, the manipulation of the photographs on different media in turn denotes the pieces and boosts their connotation; as for example, although photo paper is the medium par excellence, light boxes become that special connection with the advertising world that prevailed in the 50s both in Havana and in New York.

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Brooklyn Bridge

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China Town

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Furthermore, the use of the advertising medium is not for nothing, if you consider that it favors the game between the idea of art or advertising, and thus dilutes the figure of the artist, betting on a creator who is trying to threaten traditional art values and the role of the artist-genius. This photographer employs the artistic resources forged in the heat of postmodernism, and in turn rubs his shoulders with modern traditions while boasting the use of advanced techniques in his plastic creations, such as developing by areas, highlighting the authorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leading spirit.

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On the other hand, he operates rather intentionally with postmodern discourse mechanisms through the inclusion of audiovisual materials –time laps-, which, projected on LCD screens, appear to dynamite traditional art’s statism and two-dimensionality and bet on video. This is a technical resource also used in mass media, which talks about the author’s carnivalization while selecting extra-artistic references. Such videos, created from the sum of many photographs, could generate a communication rupture with the viewers, especially with those most visually trained in the world of advertising. These recipients at the time of the aesthetics realization would not be able to decipher if what they are appreciating is really a work of art or a simple television product of great aesthetic merit. And that is precisely what is relevant regarding the inclusion of these audiovisual projections, which additionally accentuate the ambiguity of the mentioned exhibit, while making the image of a city –Havana-, dialogue with the sound of the other one -New York. The time laps complement the photographic information, since they same instants are captured within them, although in motion, which were employed by the artist to take the photographs using long exposure technique. 72 negra

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Time Square

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New York City Central Station

Despite the fact that according to classical aesthetics, the value of works of art was previously associated with the form, the workmanship, and its mimetic relationship with the elements of reality -truth and beauty content-, today it’s much more productive to shift this value to the scope of its reception. Therefore, while the value of these pieces passes through their forma-aesthetic assessment -the tekhné, the craft-, it transcends to the dimension of its reception, which depends on all the aspects of tension which they’re capable of generating within the public. In this sense the exhibit complies with art’s unmistakable purpose of de-familiarizing the relationship between the work and reality, and of placing the viewer in checkmate so that he needs to rethink the value of his surroundings, refresh and update his views. And that is what the artist is looking for; Cubans also have a Brooklyn Bridge, a China Town, a Times Square, a Central Park; and they must be able to admire them with the same intensity with which they appreciate the aforementioned icons of American architecture. The artist insists on a continuous work, of irreverent and promiscuous recycling, in a carnival use of the resource of inter-textuality. We speak of a creator who produces sense, who is not only interested in the aesthetics of the artistic object per se, but who has the explicit intention of communicating. Juan Manuel Cruz employs contemporary art resorts and this translates into capriciously solid proposals, resulting from a young man’s work, who is giving solid steps that get him each time closer to his artistic maturity. [Julienne López Hernández] Mayabeque, 1989. BA in Art History. Professor of the Faculty of Arts and Letters.

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s/t [Tomรกs Inda]

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the

e n i l s e cloth street Havana Photo

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the clothesline

s/t [Jessica Rivera]

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the clothesline

s/t [Lucia Hernรกndez]

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the clothesline

s/t [Jessica Rivera]

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the clothesline

s/t [Roberto Ibarra]

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the clothesline

s/t [Sonia Teresa Almaguer]

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the clothesline

s/t [Guillaume Rouillard]

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the clothesline

s/t [Lucia Hernรกndez]

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the clothesline

s/t [Ailede G贸mez San Juan]

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the clothesline

Comparsa Habanera [Diana Ivis PĂŠrez Acosta]

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the clothesline

Arlequin [Enrique Gonzรกlez Santaballa]

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STORY

Dandelion [Ahmel Echevarría] Inspired by photo Con cariño de la voz de la experiencia, Cirenaica Moreira

Levitating amongst mites and very fine grains of dust. A delicate breeze could push you. Letting yourself go... Off the ground, retracing every room of a small apartment. In the living room, traces of sun stab the darkness. Levitate over the furniture: the vase on the table, the TV, glass and plaster ornaments, the fan, the old Singer with a garment half-sewn... Levitate. Bumping into walls like a dandelion. Wanting to escape, even hoping to leave your own body. Reach levity. Down there, on the cold flagstone, that other part of me lies. Going around every corner of the apartment in a scream, a desperate prayer. Insults and curses scorch the skin. Stabs of pain burst from the bruise on the cheek and eye, this is the echo of the beating. A trickle of blood staining the blouse. In silence. Levitate. Bumping into walls like a dandelion. Detaching itself from the flesh, the bruise, salt from the tear. My body tries to resume the routine. Hear the apology, the promise, prepare food. In the bathroom, in front of the mirror, the reflection of my face is diluted. Rising amongst mites and very fine grains of dust. Peaceful journey from the remains of the tranquilizer on the bottom of the glass, the smell of fuel spilled over the sound nap of a man, on the rags of the charred mattress... Levitate. Bumping into walls like a dandelion.

[Ahmel Echevarría] Havana, 1974. Narrator. Among the prizes he has been awarded are: 2010 Franz Kafka Drawer Novels Prize for Días de Entrenamiento (Czech Republic), 2012; Italo Calvino Novel Prize 2012 for the work La noria, and in 2013 he won the Dador Scholarship with Caballo con arzones. Currently he works as editor of the Vercuba and Centronelio websites.

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Con cari単o de la voz de la experiencia [Cirenaica Moreira]

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