An island apart; Holy Cross gallery exhibit explores Cuban-American art.

Byline: Nancy Sheehan

Artist Alberto Rey left Cuba in 1963 at age 3. He grew up in Pennsylvania, but visited the Cuban-American enclaves of Miami every summer. In 1998, he returned to a country he did not remember. There, he began to explore his Cuban side in a series of paintings.

Rey's haunting rendering of Morro Castle, a 16th century fortress built by the Spanish in Havana Harbor, gives us quite a different vision of the popular tourist landmark. While the turistas happily snap photos by daylight on the sunny bay, Rey's painting is done in shadowy gray tones. It is a somber night vision - perhaps the last look at a homeland that a refugee, stealing away on a raft in the dark, might later recall?

Titled "Appropriated Memories: El Morro, Havana, Cuba," the painting is part of an exhibition on view through Feb. 13 at the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery at The College of the Holy Cross. The show, called "Layers: Collecting Cuban-American Art," is sponsored by the Holy Cross Latino Studies Concentration. It is a strong and stylistically varied exhibit of about 50 pieces that show how Cuban American artists have redefined their identities through periods of geographic and political upheaval.

Many of the artists, like Rey, grew up in exile in the United States. Others, including photographer Roberto Machado, lived most of their lives in Cuba, the Caribbean's largest and most populous island. All, through their art, have worked out the relationship between their Cuban heritage and their American identity. It is a serious and revealing undertaking.

"Few questions can be more important to a person than `Who am I?' and few questions can be more important in this country today than `What makes a person a member of an ethnic group? '" Jorge Gracia, a collector of Cuban-American art and philosophy professor at SUNY-Buffalo, writes in the exhibition catalog. "The first question...determines to a great extent how each person should act and the second is important because its answer identifies people and established the parameters of collective action within the nation."

Machado was born in 1905 in Havana and emigrated to the United States in 1960, the year after Fidel Castro and his band of revolutionaries took over the country. Although a physician by training, Machado's passion was photography and when he died in 1979 in Maryland he left behind about 700 negatives, mainly of the pre-revolutionary Cuba he had known and loved. Accomplished Cuban American photographer Silvia Lizama, also represented in the Holy Cross show, was chosen for the honor of printing Dr. Machado's negatives, a project she completed in 2001.

Five Machado prints are in the exhibit, including the "Amigos en el Malecon." The Malecon is a wave-lashed coastal road along Havana's northern shore and a popular place for socializing. Machado's 1940 photograph shows two people on a motorcycle chatting with a friend through the open window of a shiny sedan, an engaging image of a happier time.

The show owes its wide range in part to that fact that objects - which include paintings, sculpture, photography and video - are drawn from three different collections: Some were lent by Gracia, some came from Lynette Bosch, professor of art history at SUNY-Geneseo, who began collecting Cuban American art in 1992, and some pieces are from the Lehigh University Art Galleries Collection of Latin American Photography and Video.

The show was organized in conjunction with a seminar last summer on Cuban American identities in art. philosophy and literature held at SUNY-Buffalo. Isabel Alvarez-Borland, Holy Cross professor of modern languages and literature, was a seminar co-director.

"Isabel Borland thought the show was just great and asked me if I would be interested in having it come to Holy Cross," Cantor Gallery director Roger Hankins said. "So I went out to see the show and I was very impressed. It was a different theme than we had done here before and I really liked the idea of a large group show that reflected a lot of different ideas about what it's like coming to terms with growing up in one culture when your roots were in a completely different culture."

Each person has a different story, and each of the 31 artists tells that story in a different way.

There are six film-videos that have been translated to digital media. Among them is "My Father's Lunch," by Tony Mendoza, a noted photographer who has been working with film in recent years. "It's a video about his father and it's sort of like you want to laugh and you want to cry at the film at the same time," Hankins said.

Mendoza's piece, about seven minutes long, follows his elderly father as he tries to negotiate the drive-through at a Florida Burger King. Mendoza asks questions in English while his father often responds in Spanish - with occasional phrases such as "senior discount" popping out of the Spanish flow here and there. Although Mendoza's father gets exactly the same meal each time, he is upset because the price keeps going up. One funny/sad moment is when, in frustration, he chews out the drive-up lady about the rising prices. She tries to explain that she obviously does not own Burger King and so the price hikes are not her fault.

The poignant video is a show favorite of Holy Cross sophomore Delia Cruz-Lopez, 19, who was born in Mexico.

"I was only a year old when I came here to the United States so it was easier for me to adapt to these changes as opposed to someone who came from Cuba when he was older," she said. "It was different for him and he had a more difficult and it makes us feel sort of bad for the guy."

But only so bad.

He loses his patience and he was right in some ways to think the way," she said. "But then the way he was kind of screaming to the drive thru lady - I mean it's not her fault and she even told him it's not my fault. It's the company's fault that the prices are going up."

It is the kid of thoughtful reaction show organizers are hoping students - and the public - will have.

"We have classes from various departments coming in," Hankins said. "There are assignments where the students are asked to pick one of their favorite pieces and then something that they don't respond to and why and then write a paper for it. It's good. It makes them think."

`Layers: Collecting Cuban-American Art'

When: Through Feb. 13

Where: The Cantor Gallery at Holy Cross College 

How Much: Free.

The gallery is located on the first floor of O'Kane Hall. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and 2 to 5 p.m. Saturdays. Public parking is located on Linden Lane, Gate 2, off College Street.

ART: PHOTOS

PHOTOG: T&G Staff Photos/CHRISTINE PETERSON

CUTLINE: (1) "Island in Crisis," an acrylic painting on canvas by Humberto Calzada. (2) Roger Hankins, curator of the Cantor Gallery at Holy Cross, in front of one of the paintings on display in the exhibit "Layers: Collecting Cuban-American Art." (3) "Amigos en el Malecon" by Roberto Machado