About 180 guest artists from 43 countries will coincide in the Cuban capital between May 11 and June 11 after the official inauguration of the Eleventh Havana Biennial under the slogan «Artistic Practices and Social Imagery».
In a press conference held Tuesday, May 8, at the National Museum of Fine Arts, Ruben del Valle Lantaron, president of the organizing committee, said: «in a world like today’s, where the most frequently heard phrase is civilization, cultural, economic, ecologic crisis,» those who make this event possible «a once-again wager on art to become an instrument for enquiry, questioning, knowledge, human understanding, and an essential element for man’s spiritual growth.»
Likewise, he said the organizers of the forum considered art «is not only for the cultural elite or experts,» and that «the world of contemporary art —despite its complex discourses—, must be patrimony of as many people as possible,», an idea that has served as guideline for conceiving the event.
In addition, del Valle Lantaron said the wide program of exhibitions starting within a few days in Havana will show the richness, diversity, plurality of discourses not only from the artistic and aesthetic viewpoints, but also from that of different generations and ways of seeing art.
The director of the Wifredo Lam Center of Contemporary Art Jorge Fernandez and the Havana Biennial, Jorge Fernandez, referred to the difficulties in organizing an event of this nature in a context in which —he said— «there is nothing new in art,» and added: «I think everything has been done, has been experimented. The matter is how we can take in all those process.»
Fernandez insisted as well in the organizers’ obligations given the high expectation generated by the Biennial.
«The Biennial generated a look to art for those who didn’t have a voice before, who were not present at the big international circuits; and also a way of doing and of understanding the processes. We have tried to be consistent with that,» he stressed.
About the exhibition and collaborative projects
As he looked through some of the proposals in the program, particularly collaborative projects, Jorge Fernandez noticed the remarkable assistance of African creators, about 14 artists, and the strength of the Caribbean selection including «young artists with an outstanding career », as well as creators from Asia and Latin America, which shows the «vitality of what is being produced in those regions.»
He insisted in that one of the Biennial’s aesthetic principles was the search for a bond with the public. «Art doesn’t need to dialogue with itself anymore, but to interact with the people,» he stressed, and went to laud the convergence of different learning in the exhibition put together at the event.
Fernandez mentioned in particular the collective projects that will be inaugurated in several spaces of the Cuban capital, among them Cinema remixed & reloaded 2.0. Black artists and the movement of the image since 1970 by Andrea Barnwell Brownlee and Valerie Cassel Oliver, that will be on display at Collage Habana (San Rafael 103 between Consulado and Industria streets), and Creaciones compartidas (Shared Creations) curated by Rewell Altunaga and Jose Manuel Noceda, which brings together brought about twenty artists from Germany, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Cuba, Spain, Haiti, Panam, Dominican Republic and Surinam at Pabellon Cuba (23 and N, La Rampa).
Meanwhile, Mac/San. Prototype dedicated to artistic practices in the public domain will be opened at the neighborhood of San Agustin (municipality of La Lisa), showing works by creators from Germany, Canada, Colombia, Cuba and the United States. And Behind the Wall (curated by Juan Delgado, and Jorge de Mello, Jose Fernandez Portal and Idalma Fontirroche as guest curators) will be appreciated at the Malecon seafront, all the way from 23 Street to La Punta.
The viable unknown. Symbolic production and pedagogical processes puts together a series of projects by students of the Higher Institute of Art, and Open Score, to be hosted by the Hispanic American Cultural Center in the care of Dannys Montes de Oca and Luis Gomez. The exhibition examines the link between art and technology seen from two opposite ends of that relationship.
The display Ethics over form curated by Raffaele Gavarro and guided by the idea that art can change the world will be showcased at the Galiano Gallery (Galiano between Neptuno and Concordia), and CIFO: una mirada múltiple. Selecciones de la Colección Ella Fontanals-Cisneros (CIFO: a multiple approach. Selections of the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection), scheduled for the Building of Universal Art of the National Museum of Fine Arts, groups pieces by more than 60 artists.
Hunting Success (La caza del éxito) by Nelson Herrera Ysla, proposes a selection of photos, paintings and objects that bring to light «everything going on in the fields of architecture and graphics » in Cuba, as the exhibition’s curator explained in another moment of the press conference.
Furthermore, general information about the theoretical part of the Biennial to take place at the National Museum of Fine Arts was offered at the press conference. The program includes master lectures, and the presentations of books and specialized publications.
A round of questions
In answering a question about the interest Cuban visual arts and specifically the Havana Biennial stir up in the United States, Jorge Fernandez confirmed the organizers’ will to assume as naturally as possible the relationship that can be established between both nations through art and thinking.
Regarding the presence of creators from Latin America in the event, Fernandez pointed out the importance of their projects, while art critic and artist Manuel Lopez Oliva reminded the audience that the Biennial emerged as an essentially Latin American and Caribbean project, and that it later started to “expand from inside out”, in line with the certainty that the world is in this region.
