Signals, after all

Havana’s Wifredo Lam Contemporary Art Center is going to witness, on Thursday March 7, the grand opening of an exhibit dedicated to Cuban contemporary architecture and design: Señales de vida.

These are some of the reflections of its curator, Nelson Herrera Ysla.

“This is the first time that an exhibition, by Cuban architects and designers in the early 21th century, represents a sharp, tenacious, unusual and solidary avant-garde in the midst of the overwhelming difficulties faced by our economy and society. None of them gives up due to the growing number of obstacles on their respective disciplines, which range from obsolete tools to deformations suffered by their author rights once their projects ad works are fulfilled.

However, they have plenty of enthusiasm and passion to contribute and honorably qualify our environment. Nothing discourages or confuses them and their biggest satisfaction is to prove that there is nothing impossible because they perfectly know what they do and understand that there are no insuperable contradictions among material precariousness, talent and imagination...

“From constructing companies and projects, from their own houses, from modest foundations, from their personal workshops, you can see them working with lucidity and joining forces, ready to fight so as to turn architecture and industrial design into an essential component of life. Their fidelity to Cuban culture, to the country where they live, to the society they belong to, is impressive and actually felt in their daily work in Cuba and the numerous international events they attend in every corner of Earth to exchange professional experiences and witness the growth of their ideas in spaces and objects...

“With this exhibition, certainly incomplete –since it doesn’t include all of the professionals along the island– we hope to contribute to create awareness and respect to this commendable effort carried out by architects and designers to surpass the poor levels that prevail in terms of design in several moments of our lives that, sadly, get multiplied in several cities, towns and corners of our insular geography.”