Interview to Margarita Gonzalez, Deputy Director of the Wifredo Lam Center
Each Biennale has a theme, it distinguishes a theoretical or conceptual base platform. From this issue the Organizing Committee chooses the artists of the world and Cuba.
Always the collateral, as its title says, it is next to the event- it does not have an issue as such and other institution carries it, which is the National Council of Plastic Arts together with the Centre for Development of Visual Arts. Those two institutions are engaged in shaping the landscape and, in general, what is involved is a glimpse of mainly Cuban contemporary art. However, recognized international artists sometimes insert also in this space; it is a possibility offered by collateral exhibitions.
Each Biennale has a theoretical platform on which we rode to select artists and also represent a coherent and logical discourse that puts on national and international scene issues of man, society and culture in general. In this edition we think of that subject- Between the idea and the experience-because it is to test the relationship between the visual arts and different specialties, including the relationship with other cultural events such as music, dance, and film: It is a mixture, an experiment with these elements of knowledge and forms of art.
Moreover, the relationship with science, with scientific experiments and botany will be on the work of many artists who visit us; it is a time to have ideas regarding these aspects and experiment to see an artistic result.
Sometimes people think they are things far away from art, but no. In recent years many artists internationally are working, for example, with plants or DNA processes; even with their own DNA they have taken actions. Experiments have been carried out with mixtures of different species and this is surprising and one asks how a plant can be a work of art? And it's true, it's very striking that causes us surprise.
For me contemporary art is that proposal that is working with existing codes and that reflects conceptually the problematic of modern man.
Sometimes we see proposals and one wonders: is this contemporary art ?, and then we have to try to nominalize: we see many exhibitions, to study, to read texts to reach a more or less acceptable consensus on what would be the contemporary art, and I think that's one of the contributions of the Biennale, which links the public concerned with the aesthetics of artists from other latitudes, which inevitably becomes a confrontation. And at this point, many things coincide.
The performance is being handled a lot, for example. An artist will come whose work is based on relationships with people and for him art is the link with the public. In fact, what he does is think about a topic or idea and chooses volunteers, like he calls them, and transmits them the idea he wants to develop and the performers are these volunteers who carry out his idea.
I think the Biennale has been slowly adding to the knowledge of contemporary art. It also influences art criticism, the market, the teaching. We have to keep in mind that the legitimacy of an artist occurs in many directions.
(Taken from The Jiribilla, La Biennale that will be)
