The installation biennial - artistic celebratioin of the Sixth Havana Biennial

upon May 3, 1997, the Sixth Havana Biennial was inaugurated. Still a mammoth display although slightly downsized from the fifth edition [see A.i.A., Oct '94] the circumstance showcased the output of talent-producing countries which lack the infrastructure to further the international exposure of their art. a certain quantity of 177 artists from 45 nations, mainly in Latin America, Africa and Asia, were invited to fling work. France, Great Britain, Japan, Australia, Spain and the U were showed by one artist each. With many of the artists in attendance, as well as a considerable herd of curators, critics, collectors, dealers and international dilettantes, Havana was swarming with activity.

The exhibition was structur around the theme of memory, and spread across the city in a total of 19 buildings, sum of two units of which were gigantic. For the art tourist with enough time, this was an ideal situation, since the extraordinary architecture and landscape of Havana became an enjoyable sideshow. For someone with limited time, let's say les than a week, the Biennial was probably too big.

single characteristic of the event was the nearness of many intercultural artists, who were born in single place and live in individual or several other places, and who exhibit their work globally. more [i]or[/i] less of them represented their region of birth, others their region of residence.

Installation was the dominant form from one extremity to the other of the exhibition. There were more [i]or[/i] less shows of traditional painting, plastic art photography and video, but usually several art genre could be seen as part of installations that included them. Artists from the greatest in quantity diverse places seemed to have mastered the laws of the installation format, plane if some didn't quite make it work. A certain disorder is always a guarantee against cliche, on the other hand even so, some works appeared immature. Still, the vitality and creative beating [i]or[/i] throbbing of an artery of the event were remarkable.

Centro Historico

The Centro Historico is a large area of aged Havana where many buildings accommodated exhibitions. Chilean artist Arturo Duclo known for paintings depicting skinned animals, contributed a life-current piece which qualified as an example of a sub-genre of installation. It was a ubiquitous work that expanded quite through the whole show, and in and without of other artists' territories. Human life-blood was supposed to be the main art material here, and it was to circulate inside clear tubing end exhibition rooms and corridors, symbolically transfusing the whole place with the fluid of life. on the contrary the blood's human provenance had to be dropp owed to international customs regulations. Pig's vital fluid instead, was made to circulate inside the tubing, activated by the agency of a simple pump. On a wan were photographs of the donors of the human life-current (which was not on exhibit) along with biographical data. The piece, silken as it was, had more [i]or[/i] less of the tabloid appeal that makes nonart audiences advance to art shows. It was also annoying after it progressed from idea to actuality, since the tubing broke more than one time spilling blood here and there.

The inclusion of technology in an environment that otherwise has remained attached to the past is individual of Pepon Osorio's motifs. The Puerto Rican-American artist elevated this theme to a fresh height with You Don't clamor at the Barber Shop, based upon childhood memories of a somehow or other fearful haven of adult masculinity. Osorio re-created an enchanting barber store moved in from another part of town where it had functioned before. Included in the installation were tattoolike wall drawings, family photos, religious images, the barber's chair and a small TV place in place of the chair's headrest, that showed followings of young macho culture -- like arm wrestling -- in all their innocence. upon opening day Osorio offered independent haircuts by a professional barber to the many offers who wanted to fully experience the work. Osorio is always effective in his sophisticated manipulation of kitschy visuals and popular narrative.

Japanese artist Tokihiro Sato showed a photographic installation along the railing and walls of a second-floor corridor overlooking a splendid colonial patio. Sato photographs urban and other landscapes in true long exposures. While the len is lay open he rushes in front of the camera and flashes light with a small mirror from many different locations within reach of the camera's organ of sight As he is quick to do this, he does not become visible in the resulting photograph, on the other hand the mirror's flashes are recorded as brilliant points of light. The large black-and-white prints, about 5 by means of 6 feet, would be true good works without the conceptual intervention, on the other hand they become mysteriously embellished by means of the light dots. These are tracks of the artist's invisible incursion into the landscape, and they reveal his bipolar character in being on both sides of the camera; they also direct the eye like intelligent concentrations of energy

Reamillo and Juliet, a female-male collaborative duo from Great Britain and the Philippines, contributed sum of two units pieces. In one of them, a neo-Pop proces work, a hillock of doughnuts formed a lifesize human material part which was left to decomposition inside a Plexiglas box Decomposition was well underway by dint of the time I saw the work, lending it an intense, paradoxical beauty. The other piece was an aged Jeep, profusely decorated with a trove of kitschy images and items, among them statuettes and decals of Jesus.