The Havana visual Arts Biennial
The Havana Visual Arts Biennial invades the city´s streets and squares
“Heads”, a Manuel Mendive´s performance.
May 12/2012. Cubadebate
The Havana Visual Arts Biennial is considered by specialists as one of the most important of its kind in the region. More than 180 artists from 43 countries have gathered in the Cuban capital since yesterday 11May until the next 11 June in order to share new proposals on the subject of “Artistic practices and social imaginaries”.
The city´s inhabitants and probably also its visitors could be amazed these days by the cultural variety: from an “irreversible conga” contagiously irrupting in the Prado avenue to such performances as “Heads” under the authorship of Manuel Mendive, a real carnival of naked or half-naked bodies in a sort of African body art.
According to such trends, the Cuban capital will become an open gallery, a common space of life together –without detriment of museums ´walls- where artists of varied generations, interests and styles will set their works in motion.
A state of youth is perceptible even beyond age, in the freshness and nonchalance of experienced creators who participate with the same will as beginners to passionately jump into the void.
With a significant presence of Africa and Middle East artist –among them the South African Steve Cohen, the Moroccan Batoul Shimi and the Palestinian Rafat Asad- the Biennial´s ship will go at full speed.
In the old part of the city there will function 23 traditional spaces such as galleries, the Gran Teatro, the Real Fuerza Castle , hotels and the San Francisco de Paula church.
To add further seduction the splendid Havana malecón as well as other open spaces in five municipalities shall be available for the art game.
Organizers call them “stolen spaces”, though it would be more exact to call them spaces given back to the natural dominion of art.
In the group of younger artists the presence of art schools graduates is noticeable for their daring and irreverent attitude and their discovery of a trained look piercing the crust of routine.
Worth mentioning is Grethell Rasúa who goes against established patterns and known boundaries as she transform residues into aesthetic values working with such human body fluids as blood, mother milk, semen, tears, earwax and even excrement submitting them to a dehydration process to add to them another dimension which puts the useful and the beautiful together.
“We can make the disagreeable become its contrary. That´s for me one of the greatest challenges and in order to assume it, I take on culturally ignored materials,” the artist affirms. For her, as Picasso defined it, the artist is “a receptacle of emotions coming from any place on earth or heaven, form a piece of paper, a passing figure or a spider web.”
Collateral exhibitions will be held in the Morro- Cabaña Park and the Cuba Pavilion, with 10 collective projects gathering artists of various generations, while six itinerant exhibitions will be shown throughout the city, not to mention joint exhibitions of Cuban artists living in the island or abroad.
In short, the Biennial has become a magnetic center of expressive languages with their lot of innovations, provocations and reflections. Havana is an infinite canvas where art is at home stirring up the city.
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