Cuban Visions at the Metropolitan Pavilion
Cuban Visions, one of the largest and more complete exhibitions of contemporary Cuban art to ever show in New York City, opening May 27 at Metropolitan Pavilion as part of city-wide spring celebration ofCuban culture, alongside the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Si Cuba Festival.
Organized by Alan Boss, president of the Metropolitan Pavilion, the exhibition has been curated by Mailyn Machado and Yandro Miralles. The artists in Cuban Visions were selected for their achievements in art throughout the world coupled with their artworks’ significance to Cuban culture. The collective showcase will give a cohesive perspective to the group of 26 well-known artists, mostly who live in Cuba today, and presented artworks in different forms of media representing the broad spectrum of visual arts coming out of Cuba today.
Although some of the artists have shown in solo exhibitions in the US, they have not been grouped together for a single show to represent in New York the art movement currently happening in Cuba. Through the artists’ individual visions coming together in a single show they compose a collective point of view about their cultural identity, while showing the diversity of the cultural movement in Cuba. The pieces speak about history, economy, politic, society, traditions, race and racism, sexuality, and religion.
Cuban Visions aims to present Cuban culture and reality through contemporary art that transcends political differences, updates cultural traditions, and deconstructs historical narratives to create new dialogue between prominent Cuban artists and Americans interested in a deeper understanding of Cuban life.
Featured artists include: Juan Carlos Alom, Belkis Ayón, Luis Enrique Camejo, Raúl Cordero, Carlos
Estévez, Antonio Eligio Fernández (Tonel), Adonis Flores, José Manuel Fors, José Emilio Fuentes, Aimee García, Rocío García, Glenda León, Reynier Leyva Novo, Jorge Luis Marrero, Cirenaica Moreira, René Peña, Marta María Pérez, Eduardo Ponjuan, Ángel Ramírez, Sandra Ramos, René Francisco Rodríguez, Esterio Segura, José Ángel Toirac y Meira Marrero, and José Ángel Vincench.
In 1991 Boss founded Metropolitan Pavilion, a renowned event space centrally located in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood. Metropolitan Pavilion has been host to numerous Cuban art projects including an exhibition of the work of Lester Campa, a showcase of 17 Cuban artists exhibiting Santeria-inspired art titled Maferefún Cuba with performances by El Grupo Afrocuba de Mantanzas, among others.
Mailyn Machado(b. Havana, 1976) graduated in Art History from the University of Havana in 2001, and completed postgraduate studies in Art Criticism at Gerona University, Spain, in 2006. Her professional work has been mostly as an art
and audiovisual media critic. She taught Theory of Artistic Culture in the Faculty of Arts and Letters in the University of Havana. She is a member of the Critics Section at the Visual Arts Association of the National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC) and the National Film Press Association (FIPRESCI). She is now
the editor of the cultural magazine La Gaceta de Cuba, published by UNEAC. She received the “Gui Perez Cisneros” Art Critic Award for her essay Tres veces en torno a la pintura de Raúl Cordero, as well as the National Curatorship Award for the exhibition Continuous Shift, which was part of the 5th Contemporary Cuban Art
Salon, both awards by the Visual Arts National Council of the Cuban Ministry of Culture. Machado has been the curator of exhibitions at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, Cuba, the official section of the Havana Biennial, and various Cultural Centers of Spain in America. She also collaborated with the Gene Siskel
Film Center in Chicago, USA, and the Institute of International Visual Art (Iniva) in London, United Kingdom. Texts by her have appeared in important Cuban and foreign publications.
Yandro Miralles (b. Havana, 1980) graduated in Art History from the University of Havana in 2006, and completed postgraduate studies in Museology and Museography in the UNESCO Department on Sciences for the Comprehensive
Preservation of Cultural Property at the National Center for Conservation, Restoration and Museology in Cuba (CENCREM) in 2009. He was a professor of Art History at the Faculty of Arts and Letters at the University of
Havana. Miralles has organized exhibitions for various institutions in Cuba including the National Museum of Fine Arts, the Cuban National Ballet, the National Museum of Dance, the National Museum of Decorative Arts, the Cuban Photographic Library, and the Servando Cabrera Moreno Museum and Library, as well as for the Cuban Artists Fund and the Magnan Metz Gallery in New York, USA. He also participated in the organization of various events like the Havana International Ballet Festival, the International New Latin American Film Festival in Havana, and the Havana Biennial, among others. He has offered lectures and
published various texts in specialized magazines and other publications on contemporary Cuban art. He currently lives in New York and is the curator of the collective exhibition Cuban Visions for the Metropolitan Pavilion. He is also the Curator in Residence of the Cuban Artists Fund, where he is preparing the exhibition Body Memories by Cuban photographers Cirenaica Moreira and Adonis Flores.
For more information: www.cubanvisions.com
Cuban Visions. Metropolitan Pavilion. 123 West 18th Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10011.
