INSIDE CUBA’S EXHILARATED AND SAVAGE ARTS SCENE

INSIDE CUBA'S EXHILARATED AND SAVAGE ARTS SCENE
BY JOANNA MURRAY-SMITH - AUG 13, 2014

In Cuba, a country where criticism of the government is whispered and no
citizen is allowed in any boat for fear they'll flee to Florida only 90
miles away, it is somewhat surprising to come across a wild warehouse
party in the beachside suburb of Vedado on Friday night, featuring rock
bands, electrified flamenco, edgy music video, film screenings and an
exhibition of compelling political art.

In a two storey former church, magnificently dilapidated and spot lit, a
few blocks from the famous Malecon (boardwalk), the headquarters of the
art collective F.A.C (Fabrica Arte Cubano) is teeming with Cubans and a
smattering of young hip tourists. Swarms of well-dressed gay men and
beautiful Cuban girls laugh and drink the ubiquitous mojitos as they
saunter around the enormous multi-levelled space, discussing the art,
buying cheap mojitos at the chic bars, watching the huge music videos
and spilling into outdoor terraces, lit by moonlight.

The building has been adapted into a permanent multi-media art-space,
with Moorish peep-holes through which art in all its forms can be
glimpsed within exquisite architectural frames. As you wander through
the space, art works and party-goers appear through these unexpected
internal windows, creating a multi-dimensional experience, which changes
every two months and is funded by the artists themselves.

A crowd of around a hundred sit on wooden crates surrounding one of
several stages to watch a local band and the three mesmerising female
dancers (Compania Flamenca Ecos) who perform a kind of trippy-new
millennium flamenco to thunderous applause, while hundreds of other
hipsters mingle downstairs.

The locals are either inoculated against the rum by virtue of its
low-price and availability or they are high on this pulsating, joyful
atmosphere. Everyone is well dressed but no garment has a brand name.
There is no sign of drugs — no wired eyes or even the whiff of marijuana
— ecstasy is here but it's embedded in the artistic circus that keeps
laying on new acts around every corner.

From the music to the soft-drinks — there is nothing obviously American
on show. This is a tiny glimpse into a world where America has no
cultural muscle and though some of the conceits of the art feel
familiar, there are some striking differences in how it is received.
When a Cuban rock-band takes to one of several stages, the audience is
appreciative but there is no dancing or mosh-pit. They sit
reverentially, then applaud passionately.

It is the visual art on the second floor that is particularly
captivating and fulfills the promise of the exhibition title: "De Lo
Sublime A Lo Ridiculo" (translated as "It's a fine line between the
sublime and the ridiculous"). Video art equal to anything one might see
at the Tate Modern or Serpentine, nestles next to sculptures, oils and
photographs. Curated by Maylin Pérez Parrado, a charming young Cuban
art-history graduate, the exhibition could have easily been stumbled
upon at any up-scale gallery in Melbourne or Sydney or in Berlin or New
York. But here in Havana, the political heart-beat of the work is
unsurprisingly louder and more emotional.

A magnificent world map — distinct and beautiful has subtly textured
brick-work layered over the communist countries. Adonis Flores'
photograph of a Cuban soldier blows a bubble of multi-colored flowers.
Enrique Rottenberg recreates a 19th century colonial salon with himself
in a bunny suit confiding to a Catholic Priest. What appears to be a
rusty old submarine periscope has tiny glass prisms in its sockets,
showing photographs of normal life. The humanity contrasts beautifully
with its inflexible infrastructure.

Everywhere in Havana you feel the layers of time. I think constantly of
all the times I've said to my children: "Wouldn't it be great to be
standing in this place a hundred years ago?". I am standing in that
place and time — only the laptops of tourists in hotel lobbies and the
stalls of canned soft drink (cheaper and more available than water)
disturb the illusion.

Hotels are the only businesses that accept credit-cards – and only
those not affiliated with U.S. banks — so almost every daily interaction
is cash-based. Horses and carts carrying tourists clip-clop around the
plazas. My iPhone doesn't work in Cuba — there is no service provider.
Old men on street corners sell newspapers. There is no intrusive
Coldplay or Beyonce blaring from shops, cafes, poolside or even in hotel
elevators. The music that blasts out of the open bars, like the famous
Bar Monserrate is live, Cuban and invariably great.

The Hotel Nacional, a faded but glorious mash-up of neo-classical,
art-deco, Californian and Moorish design, reputedly built by American
gangsters in 1930, overlooks the Straits of Florida and appears almost
indistinguishable from the photos that line its hallways depicting the
stars of bygone times from Edward VIII to Errol Flynn, as well as when
it was the headquarters of Che and Fidel during the Bay of Pigs crisis.

Uniformed sullen waiters carry trays of daiquiris across the green lawn
under the brutal sun, bell-hops load luggage onto brass trolleys, the
grand dining-room menu offers shrimp cocktail before a cabaret show in
the 'Parisian Room', and downstairs you pass a hairdresser and bank on
the way to the figure-eight shaped swimming pool around which Americans
in swim-suits snack on club-sandwiches.

All the architecture in Old Havana is Spanish colonial: faded muted
colours – yellow, green, pink – and intricate ironwork is set against
the contrasting plazas, opulently green with palm trees. Look up and you
will see rinsed plastic bags drying on washing lines and residents
peering from their dilapidated balconies onto the festive locals who
roam the streets of old Havana until the early hours, talking and laughing.

Every second car is a relic of 1950s America, restored with Toyota parts
and new duco. The significant historic buildings are being renovated,
but mostly the city's historical elegance clarifies the modern poverty.
Beggars sit beside crumbling marble collanades. Mansions with only the
external walls still standing are draped in thick vines. Everywhere the
past and present collide with ad-hoc beauty.

The Museo de la Revolucion, praising the beloved Castro, occupies the
old Presidential Palace from where Bastista once ruled. The marble
staircases and elegant mouldings incongruously host the photographs and
memorabilia of Che and Fidel in all their revolutionary glory.

Outside, the streets are full and the atmosphere is relaxed. Music is
everywhere. In Obispo, the main street of old Havana, the locals queue
for their quota of eggs from the free market while tourists queue
opposite at the only bank where it's possible to make a Mastercard
withdrawals — over the counter from a an actual human who creates
profound suspense as she studies your passport with unhurried concentration.

Taxi driving is a high-status job and many of the drivers are
university-educated – the man who drives me to Hemingway's house was
once in the diplomatic corps and is the only person I meet over five
days who has ever left Cuba. Many of his colleagues are doctors and
engineers who cannot get jobs and in any case, many trained
professionals favour tourist-based occupations where they have the
opportunity to interact with foreigners.

Every person I meet expounds love and loyalty for Fidel, who evokes the
kind of affection appropriate to one's actual father, not only the
father of the revolution. Everyone expounds on free health-care and
education — but lament the economy. "Things have to change". Che is not
held in the same regard as Castro. Despite the stencils that adorn many
buildings and every T-shirt sold in the souvenir shops, his name elicits
shrugs. More than once I am reminded he was Argentinian. His brutality
is not forgotten. "It had to be the Che way, otherwise — ," the driver
draws his finger across his throat.

Yselle, a 29 year old university graduate guide is, like most Cubans
I've met, fiercely patriotic and intellectually curious. But she is
simultaneously despairing of being unable to see the world. The problem,
everyone says, is not the Cuban government but the lack of money and the
impossibility of securing a visa from any country other than Russia and
Equador. She spends all her tips on the beaten up second-hand books
lining the stalls on the Plaza Vieja and asks me to send her the novels
of Paul Coelho.

In the midst of the pumping F.A.C. party, I ask Maylin — whose
curatorial ability would hold its own anywhere in the world ––how she
and her artistic colleagues find out what is going on in the global
art-world.

"A little bit by the internet but it is very slow… and from foreigners
like you or a few friends who live outside Cuba".

When I show her a photo of Patricia Piccinini's crazy animal hot-air
balloon hovering over Melbourne that I happen to have on my phone, she
is very excited – she has glimpsed it somewhere on the internet and
describes Picicinini's sculptures with detail.

"Will you ever get out of Cuba – even just for a couple of weeks?" I ask
her.

"It's not possible. I am curating a show soon for the Dutch Embassy and
I have a tiny hope to go to the Netherlands next year but it is
completely a dream".

I'm still mystified by how F.A.C. gets away with promoting art that is
so clearly critical of communism, and so representative of the
anti-establishment themes of contemporary political art all over the world.

She shrugs with a wry smile. "Irony allows us to define the work as
essentially "art" rather than political comment. Humour helps us," she says.

There is a beguiling nationalism in Cuba, a recognition of the beauty of
Havana and an articulate cultural pride and affection for the Fidel of
the past. It recognises no inconsistency with the longing for freedom
and anxiety about money and the future. The simultaneous love for Cuba
and criticism of its current state is evident in most of the art
presented by F.A.C, which manages to be exhilarated, indigenous and
savage all at once. For someone thoroughly jaded by sometimes posturing
Western art that wears its polemic on its sleeve, I find myself
incredibly moved.

On the way to the airport, my taxi bursts a tyre. I stand by the side of
the road, while Leonardo, my loquacious driver, hastily fixes it in the
atrocious heat. As we head for the airport, he shows me his laminated
Cuban identity card which he carefully replaces in his pocket.

"This is the most valuable thing in Cuba," he says, "all of Mexico wants
one". If you get to the U.S. coast with one of these in hand, they are
legally obliged to accept you, he says. A final reminder of one of the
many realities Cuban art has the power and passion to tell.

Source: Inside Cuba's exhilarated and savage arts scene | Daily Review:
film, stage and music reviews, interviews and more -
http://dailyreview.crikey.com.au/inside-cubas-exhilarated-and-savage-arts-scene/