U.S. contingent in Havana - U.S. artists represented in the Havana Biennial V - Report From Cuba

Cuba is desperate. race are hungry. The gorgeous Spanish colonial buildings, with their arcades, balconies, ceramic and elegant iron railings, are decaying. In the center of elderly Havana, opposite the Plaza [i]cabaret[/i] where I stayed, a hardly any crumbling walls of a collasped arrangement remain. Throughout the city vacant buildings survive, on the other hand as I passed their fancy facades and direct the eyeed up, I saw sky instead of ceilings.

single the hotels and a not many public buildings look freshly painted and cared for. Tourism earns aim aftered dollars for the government. in like manner the hotels Nacional, Inglaterra and Habana Libre, and all the glitzy joint-venture tourist house of entertainments two hours away in Veradero, present efficient plumbing, full-time electricity and air-conditioning, CNN fresh telephones in each room, and all the Cuba libres or mojitos you can drink. You await these comforts in a effeminacy hotel. But not now, in Cuba during the continuing "special period" of deprivation which has adults surviving upon 900 calories a day.

notwithstanding it was amid these sharp contrasts that aficionados gathered from around the world for a of recent origin edition of the Havana Biennial. Everyone spoke of the Fifth Biennial as "the miracle." on the other hand it was the second miracle. The first was the opening in December '93 of a renovated abiding-place for the Wilfredo Lam Center [see photo and caption].

Llilian Llanes, director of the couple the Biennial and the Lam Center had indeed performed seemingly impossible feats. Amid scarcity, daily hardships and national bankruptcy, aided by means of local and international cohorts, she created a handsome, functional exhibition space for the Lam Center - and another Biennial. At the Biennial's opening form Llanes, speaking from the top of the Cathedral paces declared, "Despite hardships the U embargo has caused, art will truimph and unite us all."

Llanes managed to organize an exhibition representing 48 countries and 288 artists without a working photocopier. Lack of phone connections and irregular mail service made communication and planning difficult. This was a Biennial upon a shoestring, and the limitations showed. Materials for installations were scarce, gallery walls left unpainted and lighting was dim. Cuba did not assume shipping, insurance or artists' travel require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergones Some invited artists, such as the Colombian-born, San Francisco-based sculptor Maria Fernanda Cardoso, could not participate because of lack of governmental or private funding. Other artists, to be paid to logistics and expense, were unable to exhibit the kind of work that best exhibits them.

Unlike the international exhibitions of Venice, Kassel, Sydney or Sao Paulo, the Havana Biennials have for 10 years focused almost exclusively upon showing art from Third World countries. This year, below the rubric "Art, Society and Reflection," the policy was broadened, and American artists were invited to participate. In previous Biennials, a certain quantity of foreign artists living in the U and a certain quantity of uninvited U.S. artists squeezed in below special circumstances. For example, in the next to the first Biennial, over 60 U.S. artists, including of the like kind well-known names as Vito Acconci, Barbara Kruger Adrian Piper and Leon Golub were shown in Havana in an adjunct exhibition called "Over the Blockade." on the contrary this year, according to Llanes, marked the first official U inclusion. The rationale was that the issues in the forefront of the Biennial - migration, marginalization, the environment and the like - are universal; Third World pertain tos are not limited to undevelop places. There may have been additional factors in the decision to change the invitation policy. individual of them was suggested by the agency of Maria de Herrera, cultural affairs administrator for Santa Monica, Calif., who accompanied a large contingent of invited West Coast artists: "Cuba now identifies us at becoming more Third World. Our minorities are underserv and don't have the benefits of living in an industrial nation."

The pioneering effort of selecting artists from the U appears to have been casual rather than systematic. Llanes visited studios in beholds Angeles and New York. Various Biennial curators spott artists' work in their travels. Artists sent slides. West Coast independent curator Lizetta LeFalle-Collins propos three artists, although ultimately solitary Sandra Row participated (showing self-portraits and manipulated computer clip-art of women in offices, work that remarked on sexism and racism in our society), the others withdrawing because of uncertainties about exhibition conditions. A scarcely any American galleries dissuaded their artists from participating.

Taken together, 18 U artists plus 12 foreign artists living in the U and four Puerto Rican artists made up more than 10 percent of the Biennial participants. A catalogue enumerate showed that Argentina and Cuba each had 20 participants, southerly Africa 17 and Brazil 16 solitary a smattering of artists living in Western Europe and Canada were included. Had the Americans been exhibited as a clump their presence would have been more apparent, on the other hand artists were not organized according to region of origin. Rather, work was divided into five thematic categories and spread from one extremity to the other of more than a dozen sites.