Whether or not you’ve visited Cuba (yet), it’s well known that artists are a celebrated group within the society.
As Wilfredo Muñoz, Executive Director of the Ludwig Foundation in Havana, explained to me, “In order to understand how Cuba has endured so much, and how its people still look so happy, it’s because of the artistic culture.”
Case in point: The Bienal de la Habana (also written as Biennial or Biennale), which is currently celebrating its twelfth edition in three decades.
Many of the works, both by Cubans and international artists, wrestle with political statements and cultural references and questions of identity.
There is no central location for this Bienal, instead it is spread across the city—on the street, in private homes, and spaces previously unavailable to the public.
Its slogan, “Between the idea and the experience,” addresses the typical complaint about art being high-brow, or only available to those who can afford to see it in a museum, let alone afford to own it.
This is truly a show for the people, and the Cubans especially (captions were minimal, and typically only in Spanish).
Many of the works are interactive, to touch and explore, appealing to all generations, and breaking the boundaries of “conceptual” with installations part of everyday experiences.
This edition includes the second Detrás del muro: En el media de la nada ('Behind the Wall: In the middle of nothing'), organized by curator Juan Delgado, Elvia Rosa Castro and José Fernandez, which displays works of art along the Malécon, the seawall of the Atlantic, a site with great importance to the Cuban culture as a place of hangouts, goodbyes and even foreign targets.
This year, the work of over 50 artists both Cuban and foreign was displayed in an area of just 14 blocks, on buildings lining the inland side of the road as well, including an American’s vision of an ice rink.
Balance Cubano by Cuban artist Inti Hernández uses a typical rocking chair, in design and materials to illustrate the Cuban nation, arranged in different combinations to ensure the possibility of a conversation, community from a solitary object.
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With Secreter, Lina Leal, from Colombia, assembled a pile of desks as a statement of the secretary’s role in documenting history. “This is the place that protects and tells our stories, both happy or everyday or records of abuse that occur between the walls of the home and in many case don’t leave them.” Perhaps it’s not without coincidence that this term both in Spanish and English refers to both the piece of furniture and the person who sits at it.
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Rafael M. San Juan’s Primavera is a permanent sculpture of a woman’s head, unveiled for the Bienal. The Cuban sculptor was inspired by the Malécon, over which Primavera gazes, saying “it is a place where you first discover diversity, what you are and what you can become. Every face is part of a continent, a race with the influence of an exodus, or an exile.”
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José Rosabal’s Fuente de luz ('Fountain of Light') is a site-specific triptych installation, which can be transported after the show, intended the artist said “to evoke the beat of life around the Malécon, defined and bathed by the Caribbean Sea.”
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Sweet Emotion, from the Efecto Placebo series by Cuban artist Alexander Guerra supersizes the “Like” symbol from Facebook making the world of social media physically social —in a country largely lacking the internet.
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Cuban sculptor Roberto Fabelo’s Delicatessen is an oversized aluminum and steel pot being stabbed with forks, a reference both to a pan’s literal function as well as a symbol of livelihood.
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Liudmila Lopez, an artist from Santiago, installed Parto a la Libertad, a metal slide large enough for adults to enjoy, too, in the shape of a fantastic shoe. In this neighborhood without many parks, but with eight nearby schools, art is an experience.
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Eloo, the Sound of DNA by Antonio Guzman, is typical of the Panamanian artist’s work in that it is directly influenced by the location of the installation, what he refers to as “Sociological mapping." El Organo Oriental “highlights the significance of the organ in Cuban culture and the rich tradition of the organ in Amsterdam,” where Guzman now lives. This organ plays music written by information from a sequence of the artist’s DNA.
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Michelangelo Pistoletto, in his series Third Paradise plays with an amalgam of the mathematical infinity symbol, in which one ring represents nature and the other artifice. Pistoletto’s central ring “stands as a procreative womb of a new mankind”. This room displayed images of the Italian artist’s creations of this symbol around the world, with drums that were used to install the symbol outside on Plaza Vieja one day during the Bienal.
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Across the way is Muro de empirismo, by artist Dayán Díaz. At first glance, at least for a visitor to the neighborhood, it’s hard to tell if this is an installation or a “real” climbing wall. The work is made of brain-shaped supports and also provides activity and amusement for the kids (and adults) in the area.
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Goteo ('Drip') is a photography installation suspended by a pipe combining lenticular prints (prints that show different images depending on the angle) from different decades (1958-2015) by Ernesto Fernandez and his son Ernesto Javier Fernandez.
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How to recover a memory based only on documentation? At the former Tallapiedra thermoelectric plant, 100 years after it was built, the public was able to see inside for the first time. The interactive sound installation by artists Andres Levin and Cucu Diamantes aimed to highlight the idea that “energy is not destroyed, only transformed” unearthing part of Cuba’s industrial heritage and capturing its beauty even in its layers of detritus remaining from the plant’s active use.
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Sandra Calvo, a Mexican artist, recreated pieces of Havana’s interior architecture in corrugated cardboard inside La Casa de la Obra Pia. We bumped into her and she explained, “I wanted to explore what is a house, to its inhabitants, also to architects, and Havana is an implosion, with everything built up and up on the inside, hidden behind crumbling facades. Art is a poetic license just to do, to experiment.”
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César Cornejo, a Peruvian artist, questions the traditional notion of what a museum is, transforming it to a true community institution. The project, the Puno Museum of Contemporary Art, also points to a typical problem facing Havana: decaying buildings. In exchange for exhibiting in people’s home, and allowing them to be open to the public, the Puno MoCA helped repair rooms. At the home of Alberto Chinique, a rigged façade references the family’s history with four boat shells. The family owned four boats that shuttled people across the bay, confiscated during the revolution. The metal installation also plays homage to the museum work of Frank Gehry.
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La Esquina Fria ('Ice Rink'), by American Duke Riley, draws a constant line of kids, an opportunity for them to “ice skate” over a synthetic material, a fantasy in this very hot country where snow is a rarity and hielo is only found in a drink.
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Cuban-American artist Emilio Pérez created an abstract mural Un verso sencillo ('A simple verse'). Is it a billboard or is it art? David Beltran explores a particular shape and size’s connotation by transforming it into abstract art.
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