Artistic practices and social imaginary is the theme for the 11th Havana Biennial to take place from May 7 to June 7 of 2010 in Havana.
The art exhibition was announced by the director of the Wifredo Lam Center of Contemporary Art Jorge Fernandez as part of the program of activities at the Pabellon Cuba exhibiting center on the 25th anniversary of the Hermanos Saiz Association. Fernandez said despite the upcoming Biennial will have less resources at its disposal, it will continue to be just what it has been so far “a space to promote young art and to strengthen the bond between teaching art and artistic practice.”*
In this context, critic and editor David Mateo presented the catalog The end of the bullet: a decade of Cuban art, published by the Hermanos Saiz Association jointly with the National Council of Plastic Arts and the Higher Institute of Art, on the occasion of the homonymous exhibition by emerging artists displayed a few months ago at Pabellon Cuba.
Regarding the catalog, Mateo said The end of the bullet… “goes beyond the mere category of catalog and becomes almost a book, and –like the research that justifies it– proposes a selective inventory of more than 90 young artists from all over the country, who found their way with a suggestive, promising work within the so-called conceptual art and its representative variants within painting, photography, video, performance, sculpture and installation.”
Within the current exhibition, Autorretratos by Nelson Dominguez (open until June), art critic and curator Nelson Herrera Ysla presented the most recent issue of the Artecubano magazine. Among other texts, Herrera Ysla highlighted the interview “Nelson Dominguez: back to astonishment” by Isabel Perez and Alain Cabrera; “Governmental support to art, yes or no” by Llilian Llanes; “Art of a couple of decades. The rope continued to be tightened or broke” by Alain Cabrera, and “Absolute Revolution: revisiting Cuban photography (1959-1969)” by Grethel Morell Otero.
*Referring to the importance of Havana Biennial, we recommend the essay “Bienal de La Habana. 25 años de integración y resistencia” (Havana Biennial. 25 years of integration and resistance) published by researcher and curator Dannys Montes de Oca in the Arte por Excelencias magazine, no. II, y. I, 2009, pp. 82-92.
