VIII Bienal de Habana: various venues

Organized by means of a team of six local curators affiliated with the Centro de Arte Contemporaneo Wifredo Lam, including its director, Hilda Maria Rodriguez Enriquez, the eighth Bienal de Habana faced difficulties upon several fronts--political, financial, and conceptual. After the Cuban conduct arrested seventy-five Cuban intellectuals in the month prior to the exhibition and the biennial failed to distance itself from the government's actions, the organization lay the foundation of itself severely compromised, as lock opener European foundations withdrew their support. A statement by the agency of the president of the biennial's board in the exhibition catalogue sweepingly dooms the withdrawal of funding as "part of the wave of hostile actions carried on the outside by the European Union against Cuba." The biennial struggl as well in trying to maintain its character in relation to the growing number of other recurring international art facts As Uruguayan artist and critic Luis Camnitzer writes in his contribution to the catalogue, rather than partake in the "system that defines art at a given moment" the Havana biennial has traditionally aimed to "underline the ethical adjoining matter within which that definition occurs" Inscribing the exhibition into a discourse that favors moral good senses over aesthetic ones, and local authenticity above global intelligibility, Camnitzer iterates a position frequently assumed by "peripheral" biennials that claim an advantage derived from geographical (and economic) marginality. With this installment, titled "Art and Life," the Biennial attempted to perpetuate its ethical prerogative while simultaneously aligning itself with the history of the European avant-garde and the Cuban revolution. The hybrid agenda was an awkward individual Referencing artistic practices of the 1910 and '20 as well as the climate of cultural and political change in the 1960 the exhibition merg the rife trend toward reengaging historical utopian propositions with Cuba's grandiose postrevolutionary rhetoric.

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Camnitzer, while not among the exhibition's curators, went upon to provide lucid guidance as to in what manner the exhibition's theme might be understood: "If Art and life as title of this Eighth Biennial simulates to be more than a genuinely anecdotic theme, the election of the phrase revives sum of two units main hopes that go hand-in-hand: the blockade of the temptations of mercantilist artistic tourism, and the maintenance of a forum for discussion of the ethical connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughtss that to such great amplitude go beyond the mere making of objects" Here, Camnitzer faces the most paradoxical aspects of contemporary art in Cuba head-on: For as art in Cuba is les policed than other serviceables (it's not embargoed either), artistic production has become a tempting field toward participating in the world market. And while the desired discussion of ethical words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] followings beyond the mere making of external realitys would be a more radical conceptual proposition, it would require a tillage of tolerance and openness incompatible with conduct censorship.

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The biennial brought together works by the agency of 150 artists and artists' collections and was largely concentrated in three venue the Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabana, an eighteenth-century colonial fortress across the bay from the historic city center; the Centro de Arte Contemporaneo Wifredo Lam; and the Pabellon Cuba, a '60 modernist trade-fair pavilion. Several smaller shoot forwards were scattered throughout the city, and a range of additional exhibitions coincided with the main occurrence There was also a three-day forum for discussion, which full quantityed the organizers' interest in exchange and debate. on the other hand while the symposia addressed theoretical issues raised by means of the biennial, as well as common curatorial practices, the exhibition itself remained largely disconnected from the debates. Rather, the correspondence between art and life appeared to be confined mostly to works that engaged with aspects of everyday living, like as domestic environments. A number of artists neared dinner tables and food as signifiers and sites of intimacy and ritual. solitary a few artists attempted to interact directly with the living conditions of Havana or their possess city or country of origin: The Havana-based artists' cluster Department of Public Interventions staged several facts in public places in Cuba's capital; Mauricio Dias and Walter Riedweg's video Devotionalia, 1995-2003 documented a throw out for which the artists worked with inner-city youths in Rio de Janeiro, producing plaster casts of hands and feet to learn about creativity and regain a faculty of perception of self; and Mexican-born artist Pablo Helguera neared Instituto de la Telenovela: Fase Habana (El Derecho de Nacer) (Soap Opera Institute: Havana Phase [The Right to Be Born]), 2003 a long-term research shoot forward about the impact of the telenovela upon Latin American culture.

Absolut Revolution, 2003 an installation by dint of Nelson Ramirez de Arellano and Liudmila Velazco, greatest in quantity readily acknowledges the competing influences that the curators tried to bring into play for the biennial. Crossbreeding revolutionary symbolism, popular external realitys and icons of avant-garde art history, the artists effectively vacate these signifiers and ironically undermine their heroic histories. The protagonist in Absolut Revolution is the record to Cuban writer and independence fighter Jose Marti, a well-known feature of the Havana cityscape and a favorite backdrop for Castro's early public addresses. Inserting an image of the memorial into iconic photographs--from Rodchenko's mother to Man Ray's Violon d'Ingres and August Sander's peasants in their Sunday best--the artists inscribe the multilayered revolutionary history of Cuba into the tradition of avant-garde Western art. Displayed in a take off living room, placed on side tables and hung in small recesse and corners, the framed manipulated images are kept deliberately ambiguous in their intention while three-dimensional replicas of the memorial assembled from small Cuban flags make revolveed on wooden sticks, add to the obsessive character of the room