Cuba Avant-Garde: Contemporary Cuban Art from the Farber Collection

Howard Farber’s collection of contemporary Cuban art – initi- ated in 2001- contains works by artists that live inside and out- side the island in different countries. That advantage doesn’t necessarily guarantee, per se, the curatorial criteria, but poses a challenge to the division between art “made in Cuba” or by artists that constantly travel to and from the island, and art “made outside of Cuba”, particularly if it is “made in Miami” and/or related to the dissident generation that broke ties with the regime during the late 80s.

The inclusion of Nosotros los de entonces ya no somos los mismos (1986) is key. This is a photograph rescued and intervened by Rubén Torres Llorca in which he appears next to other participating artists at the entrance of the mythical exhibition Volume I, International Art Center, Old Havana, 1981 which changed the history of Cuban art. The photograph features José Bedia, Flavio Garciandía, and Gustavo Pérez Monzón the latter two went into exile in Mexico as well as the deceased Juan Francisco Elso, art critic Lucy Lippard, and Ana Mendieta.

A piece by Ponjuán-René Francisco is titled Outside Cuba Inside. The Cuban flag is an iconography de-constructed by irony. In Tania Bruguera’s piece, Estadísticas (1996), the flag is sown with hair of the island’s residents, which has been rolled into strips of used clothing with their help. These materials contain the identity of a community diminished by the exodus.

A central theme of the exhibition is how the artists who are residents of the island exert varying degrees of criticism (with diverse grades of official consent) of the political and economic context in Cuba. With poignant humor, Lázaro Saavedra paints in El sagrado corazón (1995) the Cuban flag in place of Jesus ́s heart, the hammer and sickle over his mouth, and the American Flag on his forehead. Yoan Capote and Los Carpinteros capable of making objects, furniture, or constructions yield to a transformation under cultural irony are obviously present, as well as the boats by K-cho, and Garaicoa’s photographs of Havana in ruins. There is even a tower sculpted in Cuba by Abel Barroso, dedicated to the unexpected victims of the World Trade Center, and the subjective work of the deceased Belkis Ayon is moving and full of cultural iconographies. There are pieces full of humor about themes such as the challenges of economic strain, as in the case of La patera (2002) by Armando Mariño, who resides in Madrid. The show includes one of Glexis Novoa’s paintings of caricaturized iconographies of power made when he still lived in Cuba; but not the ones that continue to undermine said power with images of security and vigilance produced while he lived in the United States. If Tonel’s watercolor Autorretrato comiéndome una rata (1997) is undeniably powerful, the sculpture La silla (another possible self portrait without arms) lacks strength, and its placement at the entrance was banal.

Bedia’s La isla espera una señal (2000), the only piece produced in Miami by an early 1980s artist to be selected, makes reference to the island. Arturo Cuenca and Gustavo Acosta are represent- ed by works produced before their departure. There are recent works only by Miami artists such as Carlos Estévez, a member of a later generation that left without experiencing the radical rup- ture that deprived the others of the sought-after aura of the revolutionary artist. In sum, there is an absence of works by artists from the Cuban Diaspora that belong to the Collection and reveal a politically critical art in the context of the United States. That perspective would allow the collection to accomplish its stated goals of addressing the full scope of contemporary Cuban art.