Cuban Zeal: Revolutionary art and artists

[IndianaGreen]

Cuban Zeal: Revolutionary art and artists

The 10th Havana Biennial has transformed the Caribbean city into a melting pot of truly revolutionary art and artists. Alice Jones reports

Monday, 4 May 2009

Just a few minutes' drive from the hill- side mansions of Cubanacan, the leafy north-western corner of Havana where Fidel Castro and Che Guevara liked to play golf in the Sixties, is El Romerillo, the city's largest slum.

The sprawling barrio, a higgledy-piggledy mix of corrugated iron and luridly painted breezeblock shacks, narrow streets, roaming dogs and impromptu baseball games makes for an unlikely cultural hotspot. But for the last five years it's been the focal point for one of Cuba's most celebrated artists, René Francisco.

Francisco, a dynamic 48-year old professor at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana started visiting El Romerillo over 10 years ago. When, in 2003, he received a grant from a foundation in Berlin to create a new work, he resolved to spend it in that desperately poor neighbourhood. First he surveyed 44 residents, asking them who was most deserving of his help. The answer came back: Rosa Estevez, a local healer who lived with her son in a broken-down lean-to. Francisco duly put the money towards renovating her home – repairing the roof, providing a toilet and putting up shelves. Along the way, he took beautiful photographs which he later exhibited in Berlin.

<snip>

Francisco's exhibition is just one of hundreds of events taking place this spring for the city's 10th biennial. Featuring over 300 artists from 54 countries, the biennial has transformed Havana into a giant art gallery: a polystyrene igloo nestles among the colonial pillars of a courtyard; a herd of metal elephants moves mysteriously around the city by night; a carousel whirligigs in the shadow of the St Francis church and an infestation of giant cockroaches with human faces climbs the walls of the Fine Arts Museum.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cuban-zeal-revolutionary-art-and-artists-1678393.html

[msongs]

1. long as they are not critical of the regime nt

[IndianaGreen]

2. You try to criticize the embargo in Little Havana and see what happens

when those anti-Semitic nazis with Cuban accents assault you for daring to say things they hate.