AFFIRMATION OF THE CURATORIAL CLASS.

The Seventh Havana Biennial (Septima Bienal de la Habana)

Havana, Cuba

November 14, 2000-January 5, 2001

November 17, 2000, arrival, Central Havana

At first sight, the city appears to be an enormous film noir set. Streets are filled with a still functioning fleet of pre-revolution-era Ford and Chevy motorcars that mingle with water trucks and orange pedicabs. Men, women and children spill over broken sidewalks in between picturesque colonial architecture collapsing at a rate of almost one building per day. This leaves a maze of jagged pastel walls and shadowy apertures. Despite all the apparent poverty and physical decay, the Cubans I meet are well educated and robust looking. Compared to other "third-world" nations I have visited, it is clear that the revolution has succeeded in raising most people's living standards. Many also immediately nail down where I am from, leading some individuals to offer me black market cigars and other goods. Nevertheless, I am impressed by the civility of Havana and its residents as well the city's urban vitality, all qualities that are rapidly receding from public spaces in the United States. This in turn makes some of th e observations that follow all the more disconsolate.

November 18, the opening of the exhibitions at Castle El Morro and Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabana

In a city where North American visitors otherwise appear only in diluted concentrations, we join ranks with several swelling battalions of art tourists unloading like occupation troops from buses and cabs onto the bluff overlooking downtown Havana. Armed with palm-sized digital cameras and hygienic water bottles, most have, for this occasion, forgone heat-trapping black on black for cotton attire that exposes un-tanned legs and necks to the tropical glare. Many wear oversized white t-shirts. Some are imprinted with candy-colored portraits of Che Guevara rendered in a 1960's, retro Cuban poster style. Perhaps it is inevitable that 40 years after the revolution, Cuba markets the iconography of what is the last Marxist-Leninist government in the western hemisphere. After all, dealing in the revolution is already an enterprise of Madison Avenue. Perhaps filmmaker and scholar Jeffrey Skoller put it best when he stated that "Guevara and the Cuban Revolution have become upscale icons for the aging boomer market." [1 ] No doubt Gap Jeans and Taco Bell ads along with cigar bars and Salsa music have helped to make this forbidden island if not exactly radically chic, then at least cut-rate exotic. Skoller goes so far as to ask whether revolutionary iconography itself "has become so much cultural baggage, exhausted, now simply nostalgic, preventing the present from rethinking the past critically and imagining the future in new and original ways?" [2] Meanwhile, like a winding sheet, the still lingering shiver of cold-war politics envelopes Havana in a singular allure, especially vibrant to people who recall the 1960's Missile Crisis, or grew up watching James Bond movies.

Meanwhile, to those of us with obsolescent socialist sentiments, Skoller's haunting appraisal is difficult to shake, especially when confronted with the paradoxes that make up contemporary Cuban life and culture. Yet perhaps more than any other kind of strangeness was the way this beautiful, struggling city managed on this occasion to again play a significant role within the international art world. At the same time it became one more occasion for the affirmation of the curatorial class: that transnational detachment of specialized professionals who manage the global spectacle called contemporary art. Perhaps this is the context in which those exhausted signifiers that Skoller alludes to seemed most in play. While there is still something different about the Bienal de Ia Habana when compared to other global art festivals--more artists of color from the southern hemisphere are represented--the same aura of exotica provides a particular status within the larger cultural tourist landscape. The significance of t his special position is not lost on the Cuban artistic community.

According to Rafael Acosta de Arriba, who chaired the board for this year's event, the Seventh Havana Biennial focused on art "not found in the great scenarios of the hegemonic market." [3] It also marks a return to the event's original intentions that he defines as "a prime concern for the marginal and peripheral subjects." [4] Yet, as theorist and curator Gerardo Mosquera explained to us from his home outside Havana, biennials are essentially modeled on the nineteenth-century institution of the "world's fair" with its promise of modernity and universal progress. If Mosquera is correct, then the hope of returning to an original position, however noble, seems doubly disconcerting. Not only have conditions changed within the economy of high art since the 1980s, but so too have cultural conditions been transformed within Cuba. Regarding the Cuban situation, one can cite the end of Soviet financial support along with the 30-year-old U.S. blockade recently amplified by the Helms Burton law which penalizes foreig n countries that dare to trade with the island. But, there is also the new, two-tier currency exchange within Cuba that permits artists (among others) to sell their work for U.S. dollars instead of devalued pesos adding another level of irony to the Biennial. Curiously, Mosquera himself, one of the first to organize the Bienal de la Habana in 1983, was altogether missing from this year's events. Despite public questioning, Biennial organizers never explained Mosquera's noticeable absence. When asked about this an ever modest Mosquera cited differences of an intellectual and historical nature including those described above. However, this only begs the question, is this not exactly the kind of discussion that should be taking place within the circuitry of contemporary art?

The exhibitions that made up the central locus of the Biennial included dozens of installations designed to fit the crypt-like spaces of El Morro Castle, a sixteenth-century, Spanish-built fortress overlooking Old Havana and the harbor. The physical drama of the space overwhelmed much of the art. The heavy stone structure that once protected the city and the Spanish Armada from other imperialist nations simply demanded equal time. One of the few projects that actually used this historical intensity to its advantage was "One, two, three, testing & ..." (2000), a collaborative work by more than a dozen artists collectively known as Galeria Dupp. Draped plastic sheets covered with splashy, repetitive drawings hung inside arched passageways. One hundred oversized cast-iron microphones, rendered in a faux monumental style, were fixed along the castle walls. And like the castle, "One, two, three, testing & stood watch over the Havana Harbor as both its guardian and a relic. DUPP, an acronym for Desde Una Pragmatic a Pedagogica (From a Pedagogic Pragmatic), began collaborating about three years ago while its members were still students at Instito Superior De Arte (ISA). Each year, ISA instructor and artist Rene Francisco Rodriguez assigns a collaborative work--DUPP is one result. Since 1997 DUPP has been actively conducting "interventions" such as inserting abstract art into Havana sidewalks and transforming a luxury department store into an exhibition boutique. The collective also collaborated with Mosquera on a tour of overgrown, rural sites where Cuban artist Anna Mendieta created her posthumously celebrated earth and body projects.

DUPP's elegant, if critically indirect, installation turned out to be one of the few Biennial projects that alluded to political content of any kind, regardless of where the allusion was directed. Among the handful of other works approaching social engagement were those of Cuban artists Esterio Segura Mora, Abel Barroso, Raul Cordero and the collaborative team of Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. Segura's wax-work like, figurative tableaus made allusion to intellectual censorship, bodily imprisonment and dreams of freedom. Barrosa's wry wooden simulacra of modern communications technology decorated the walls of a cafe that, like most of Cuban society, lacked Internet access. The large-scale photographs of Cordero titled De la Serie: Hello/Goodbye (La experiencia Las Vegas-Varadero) (2000) depicted Las Vegas neon signs and read as a satirical gesture aimed at the Biennial tourist--that is to say, in my general direction. One of the few publicly situated projects were the mural sized, digital photographs of Allora and Calzadilla entitled De la Serie: Seeing otherwise (2000). Each mural showed a young man, a person of color, facing away from the viewer and into a body of water with a setting sun just "off-screen." The artists however had digitally manipulated the reflection of the sun on the water making it appear the way the person pictured inside the photograph would see it, rather than from the perspective of the photographer (or "we" viewer). These anomalous images were attached to several pastel-colored walls along the streets of Havana and directed toward the very question of third-world cultural tourism that the organizers of the Biennial sought to address.

Other noteworthy works that addressed social conditions included those of the Spanish artist Antoni Muntadas, South African William Kentridge and Australian Jane Alexander. The three were represented by photographically based projects using video, film and digitally manipulated computer prints, respectively. Especially effective were Alexander's uncanny sienna-toned photographs from the series "African Adventure: Cape Of Good Hope" (2000). The familiar "snap-a-local" photography style, showing third-world locations, was disturbed by the inexplicable presence of children mutating into animals that stare at the viewer as if saying "Are we not human?" They actually made me wince.

Nevertheless, the majority of works in the Biennial looked no different, in either content or form, from most large-scale exhibitions of contemporary art, except perhaps the unusual abundance of organic materials such as tanned animal skins, fur, horns, feathers, bones, human hair, roots, seed-pods and, in several installations, leaves. While I understand that some artists had difficulty getting art supplies--two that I spoke with had trouble with lost or delayed shipments--I cannot help but wonder what the presence of so many "earthy" ingredients signified. Either way, this tendency contrasts with remarks made by several veteran Biennial visitors who pointed out that there were more darkened rooms with electrically dependent installations than in previous years.

One memorable exception to the politically evasive tone of events was a performance and installation by Cuban artist Tania Bruguera. The potency of her dissension did not become apparent however until the next morning. In the meantime we made a visit to Katia Varela, the technical director for the Museum of Decorative Arts. Varela offered more evidence of the convoluted bond joining the U.S. with Cuba. It seems that Cuban art institutions, like their North American counterparts, are not only struggling with a lack of capital but are coping in almost identical ways. One example is the need to increase cash revenue through the expansion of retail sales in museums. However, despite similarities, the funding gap facing Cuban arts is not the result of a hostile legislature--indeed Cuba's spending on culture is proportionally far greater than U.S. arts funding. Rather, it stems from a depressed economy made miserable in large part by the same provincial law-makers that block arts funding in the U.S. It remains an added irony that while the Bienal de la Habana was taking place, some 90 miles to the north the Florida Republican Party, dominated by anti-revolutionary, expatriate Cubans, was carrying out a virtual coup de-tat, pilfering the U.S. presidential election and hurtling key accomplishments of the Civil Rights movement back into the middle of the last century.

November 19, 10am

We taxi to the entrance of the Morro-Cabana Complex, the central exhibition area for the Biennial. Word has it that an unscheduled, second performance of an untitled piece by Bruguera will be taking place. Instead, we discover the artist describing an early morning phone call in which she was instructed that under no circumstances should she proceed with the repeat performance. The first installment took place the day before within a dark, cavern-like masonry hall that Bruguera had filled with shredded sugarcane husks. The only light within the space was the bluish cast from a black and white television set suspended like a light fixture several feet over-head. It was programmed with a five-minute loop of archived footage showing Fidel Castro doing what appeared to be everyday, "nonpolitical" activities including playing basket-ball and swimming, attending his wedding or receiving reporters in his pajamas with his young son. A few shots show him making speeches while being hugged by other Cubans. One key shot presented Fidel opening his shirt to the camera and revealing his bare chest, unburdened by a bulletproof vest. No doubt much of this imagery was familiar to viewers of Cuba's two broadcasting stations, but Bruguera had also stationed within the space four unclothed men ages 19 to 75. Therefore, what was experienced by hundreds of visitors during the opening day of the Biennial within the barely illuminated space was first the near-choking smell of sugarcane followed by the naked men carrying out what the artist described as "small, quotidian gestures such as bending or wiping the mouth." However, later it was learned that the installation would only be accessible minus the "live" elements (TV and men). Shortly after the foreign art tourists left the island, the exhibition was closed. I am not aware of any official explanation offered for this occurrence.

November, 20, offsite from the Biennial

We visit artist Fernando Rodriquez Fakon who also happens to be Francisco de la Cal--one body hosting two artists. Fernando makes it clear that he came first however and that he, Fernando, anointed his alter-ego with the decidedly unexceptional name of Francisco as a way of mocking the revolutionary sacrament of collective life. But in so many ways the rust-covered yet often waterless city of Havana through which we have traveled offers its own reproach to the ghost of socialism past. We visit with Fernando/Francisco in the elegant home of Cristina Vives who is the representative and intellectual confidante of both Fernando/Francisco as well as other Cuban artists including Los Carpinteros. The latter is an art collective consisting of three individuals sharing one remarkably integrated artistic practice. While Fernando (as Francisco) produces paintings, sculptural reliefs and prints that depict a hapless looking, mass-man inhabiting utopia lost, Los Carpinteros (The Carpenters) collectively construct elegant objects and installations of wood, metal and drawings that appear like images from Franz Kafka's mind rendered in the style of a Leonardo Da Vinci notebook. Each of these artist exhibits widely outside of Cuba. One recent installation the group had documentation for showed a room-sized, wooden lighthouse. It is at once a light-less object and an enormous filing cabinet housing dozens of fully workable but empty drawers. The implications are both obvious as well as subtle invoking both hope and bureaucratic malaise while offering further evidence that Cuban artists today, like their contemporary northern counterparts, prefer a carefully measured social criticism to the openly activist practices of the early 1980s.

According to Erena Hernandez, a specialist at the Center for the Development of the Visual Arts in Havana, the more overtly political and activist work of the 1980s has evolved into a more commodity-oriented practice that infers rather than asserts nonconformity. Government censorship and even prison sentences can explain part of this, but the increased living standards of cultural workers cannot be factored out. Because Cuban artists are now permitted to sell their work on the international market for U.S. dollars it is no surprise that artists, as well as curators and dealers, have gained a singular advantage over other Cubans. Not only can they travel abroad but in general their living standard is higher.

November 21, Central Havana

We visit the workplace and home of the painter Jose Angel Toirac, a well-known Cuban artist who was not included in this years Biennial. Toirac's recent paintings consist of smudged newspaper images reminiscent of Gerhard Richter's recent work only with thicker, almost confectionery surfaces. Missing now is the overt parody found in Toirac's earlier paintings: iconic images of Castro and Guevera selling luxury goods such as Absolute Vodka, Calvin Klein and Sony. The new work is also very different from a 1989 piece entitled Homenaje a Hans Haacke that Toriac made with a group of artists called ABTV. The homage to Haacke borrowed the German-born, conceptual artist's use of deadpan irony and documentary tropes to show that one of Cuba's official portraitists, Orlando Yanes, actually depicted pre- and post-revolutionary leaders in the same glowing, social-realist style. Homenaje was never permitted to open to the public.

November 22, The Fotateca in Plaza Vieja

Iconofilla (2000) is a series of short video segments made by Colombian artists Restre-po Hernandez and Jose Alejandro. It opens with the line, "Good morning sweet images, I want to see more." Over the course of an hour the piece offers numerous stories a la carte about the eye. Some appear to be news clips or appropriated TV programs, while others are documentary footage possibly shot by the artists themselves. Among the shorts is a scene from a Colombian soap opera in which a bandaged women falls in love with her handsome surgeon after he restores her sight. There are also groups of mourning mothers wearing enlarged photographs of their dead children who have been shot in street assassinations. A chubby boy is fit with a glass eye that inserts with a loud plop. This is followed by spectral images of Mary and Jesus that appear in the bottom of coffee cups, on stained walls and even in the reflections of ice cream vendor's carts. The final startling but morbid episode is about a woman who proceeds to take sev eral frame shop employees hostage after she discovers they have lost her family photograph. It concludes with the distraught woman shooting herself in the head. Iconofilla made me think of the pleasures and sorrows of looking at, making and writing about art. It also made me think about my own gooey, ocular organ; for a moment I imagined it to be a secret betrayer--a conspicuous parasite--drawing me, and thousands like me, here to Havana for its own inscrutable purpose. Plop.

November 23, offsite from the Biennial again

We visit Mosquera at his home in the Havana suburb of Cerro. Mosquera tells us that an estimated 1500 Americans have come to this year's event, many for the first time. He expresses his Fear that the Biennial's growing size will in fact distance people from the work on display. He describes his own concept of such exhibitions, including the one he co-organized in Johannesurg, South Africa several years ago, as a space For living. Biennials, he suggests, should be smaller and more carefully articulated, with integrated workshops and conferences. He then adds, they should also have cheap bars for meeting and discussing ideas.

One thing, however, is certain. Despite the intentions of the Biennial organizers, even Cuba is affected by the influence of the global contemporary art market. It may be that ideas of universal progress, once a promissory note for a better future, pledged by both capitalism and communism, appear today as cynical slogans of free-market hegemony. Yet if, as Mosquera conjectures, art biennials are modeled on such century-old, modernist beliefs, they nevertheless must also maintain some relevance for intellectuals and reformers. For all of its problems the Septima Buenal De La Habana reflected this need. The desire to return the festival to its original intentions, including the critique of the global art market, is a clear example of that recognition. That this return is not possible especially when so much labor is spent on attracting international art consumers (the first ever contemporary art auction to take place in revolutionary Cuba occurred during this year's Biennial) only underscores the conflict betw een ideals and historical materiality. However, the Biennial also highlighted the work of architects and planners currently re-building the old section of Havana itself. It is a massive project aimed at saving an extraordinary urban zone that UNESCO proclaimed a World Heritage Site in 1982. Perhaps, like the city of Havana, the exceptional aspects of modernity can be salvaged through a similar process of slow and tedious restructuring. Nevertheless Havana, a city neither in the present nor the past, hangs like a droplet off the leaf of history. Meanwhile a wind blows from the North. [5]

GREGORY SHOLETTE is an artist, writer, activist, curator and founding member of the REPOhistory artist's collective as well as Political Art Documentation and Distribution. He is an Associate Professor and the Chair of the Master of Arts in Arts Administration Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

NOTES

(1.) Jeffrey Skoller, "The Future's Past: Re-Imaging the Cuban Revolution," in Afterimage 26, no. 5 (March/April 1999), pp. 13-15.

(3.) Ibid.

(3.) Rafael Acosta de Arriba, Chairman of the National Council of Plastic Arts and of the Board of Directors of the Biennial in Havana, in the catalog for the Septima Bienal de la Habana 2000, Centro de Arte Contempraneo Wilfredo Lam, Consejo Nacional de las Artes Plasticas, Havana, Cuba, pp. 429-430.

(4.) Ibid.

(5.) The preceding record is based upon a trip to the Seventh Havana Biennial in Cuba organized by students of the Master of Arts in Arts Administration Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where the author currently teaches. He would like to extend his grateful appreciation to Jorge Felix, Sarah Feinstein, Carmen Larios, Erene Hernandez and Rachel Weiss.