C U L T U R E

Havana. September 9, 2003

8th HAVANA BIENNIAL
A prestigious meeting promoting
 Third World art
• Exhibitions of artists from 47 countries • Rafael Acosta, National Visual Arts Council president, discusses Cuba’s input

BY MIREYA CASTAÑEDA, —Granma International staff writer—

THROUGHOUT the years, Cuban visual arts has maintained a high profile in the country’s many spaces, galleries and art centers. Come November-December, the capital — where top exhibitions are shown — is to be immersed in an even more frenetic task. The eleventh month opens its doors to the 8th Havana Biennial; December heralds the 2nd Havana Auction, following last year’s decidedly successful one.

Rafael Acosta, president of the National Visual Arts Council and head of the Biennial organizing committee, talks about the characteristics of an event that, since its 1984 inception, has been an important space for promoting Third World artists. And because of the prestige it’s won, important for artists living and working in developing countries too.

At a press conference, Acosta announced that 150 projects by artists from 47 countries will be on show from November 1-December 15, along with work by eight Cuban guest artists and the group Enema y el Departamento de Intervenciones Públicas.

He explained that the Biennial, whose theme this year is Art and Life, is taking place "even though European foundations that have traditionally helped us have withdrawn, pressurized by anti-Cuban campaigns and measures generated by the European Union."

Hilda María Rodríguez, director of the Wifredo Lam Contemporary Art Center that is organizing and sponsoring the event, spoke mainly on the subject of selecting submissions, pointing out the seriousness and rigor that curators always use, even visiting other countries to view work. "We take aesthetics as our only starting point plus the piece’s relation to the given theme," she commented.

The Cubans invited to contribute are all young artists with work on the theme. What follows is an excerpt from a previous conversation Granma International had with Rafael Acosta — essayist, historian and poet and also engraver.

They’re young people who have left art school, intermediate studies or the Higher Art Institute. They’re all young; there are many currently working and there will be many more because last year seven art schools opened in the country. At the moment 13,000 artists are registered and in around 10 years’ time the 18 schools that we have today will produce 13,000 more graduates, without including those who are self-taught and have interesting work from the conceptual and commercial point of view. To this figure we can also add graduates of the Art Teachers Colleges — there’s one in every province — as, although they go on to teach it’s only logical that their talent will emerge and lead them to create. What we have ahead of us are waves of young artists.

Those with pieces in the Fine Arts Museum collections — Abel Barrosos, Sandra Ramos, KCHO. Others haven’t yet reached the same level of recognition but have exhibited in important galleries in the United States and Europe, Agustín Bejarano and Willy Sardiñas for instance. And those in the Biennial: Geysell Capetillo, Iván and Yoán Capote, Liset Castillo, Aimée García, Alexander Guerra, Diango Hernández, Glenda Leon, Armando Mariño, Alain Pino, Wilfredo Prieto, Nelson Ramírez, Angel Ricardo, Adrián Rumbaut, Jorge Luis Santana, David Sardinas, Liudmila Velazco and José Angel Vincench.

They’re very diverse although in general it has to be said that the art is more conceptual, more experimental, it’s what’s very popular now in contemporary art centers. Traditional easel painting has been giving way to installations, manipulated photography. Diago is one example — he began by painting in the most traditional way although his subject matter was always interesting, and has now moved on to exhibiting manipulated photos. Or rather that artists are moving in a direction that depends on what they perceive is in most demand in the art world. This is the case with Tania Bruguera who was just in Dokumenta with Carlos Garaicoa. Dokumenta, in Germany, is the world’s most important visual arts event. Tania is a very young artist who doesn’t draw or paint anything at the moment; she works with her body, does performance and has achieved great international recognition. There are all types of manifestations, in all languages, subjects and mediums by these young artists.

Oh yes. Cuba is at the center of the Cuban art market in the world. Some people are trying to say that Miami’s the center, or even in European countries, where they say that works of art leave Cuba and are sold there, but that’s not the case. When serious collectors want to buy Cuban art they come to Cuba, because it avoids the danger of buying fakes. Here you buy work directly from the artist and that gives you the security of knowing it’s a genuine original. We’ve organized some activities that have helped support this, for instance last December’s Havana Auction when almost half a million dollars’ worth of work was sold and important collectors came. The second auction takes place this December. The auction is a great help to artists living and working in the country because collectors come looking for art by those in the vanguard but also for important work by other already-known artists.

It has two readings. One is positive, in the sense that artists can make a living from their work; the other negative because many artists stop being concerned with the problems of social criticism in order to sell and sell, playing by the rules of the market — which are relentless. This is the situation that currently faces us. On the one hand, artists are dedicating one part of themselves to sell pieces that are very well done, returning to their original profession, and others are continuing to work in conceptual art but maybe now using more universal themes, more relevant to today’s world, universal problems.

There was an exodus at the end of the 1980’s, basically at the beginning of the 1990’s, mainly to Mexico and the United States. Many of these artists returned in 1993-4 and there hasn’t been another exodus. Less than 3% of artists who graduated after the Revolution live abroad. It’s a tiny proportion. Not many of those who left in the early 1990’s have had any real success as artists. There’s Tomás Sánchez, who’s in permanent contact with Cuba; he comes here every so often and has donated funds for Cuban institutions; José Bedia who takes a different position. We’ve had exhibitions of artists such as Moisés Finalé and others who live abroad but maintain cordial relations with their homeland. It’s part of our policy.

We continue to talk about this because Cuban visual artists are in a lot of promotional and commercial demand. The Havana Biennial is an event with enormous international prestige; the last one drew over 2,000 foreign visitors. The term boom is still current and it was used because Cuban visual arts have achieved international acknowledgment both from a promotional and commercial standpoint. Outstanding Cuban artists show their work a lot in important international spaces.