Prior to going to this event, the only things that I knew about Cuba were from my history classes in high school. However after the recent re-opening of diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba, I thought it would be interesting to go this event and learn more about the county. When I signed up for the event I thought that we would be shown various paintings by Cuban artists. However I ended up gaining a lot of insight into the cultural clashes and political perspectives that have been prevalent throughout Cuba since their Revolution and under Fidel Castro’s leadership. We mainly viewed art that in some way criticized the Cuban government. For example, Operation Peter Pan was a period of time when families would send their children away to America following the Revolution. This was because they were afraid that their children would otherwise be taken away by the Soviets and sent to camps to be indoctrinated. Many of the artistic pieces showed a sadness related to families being split apart in this manner.
One thing that I really appreciated about this event is that we saw all different types of artwork during the presentation which ranged from paintings to movies to performance art. What was intriguing to me was the reason as to why performance art was so popular in Cuba. Many artists in Cuba that aren’t sanctioned by the Cuban government do not have a lot of money and cannot even afford to buy paper or paint to make a physical piece. Therefore in order to save money, they perform their thoughts and emotions instead. Another interesting thing that we learned about was the evolution of Cuban film. During the mid and late 1900s, in order to make a movie people needed to buy physical film which was incredibly expensive. The Cuban government would offer to pay for the director’s film as long as the script was pre-approved by them. However with the succession of technology, citizens no longer need help from the government to pay for movies because they can all use their phones and laptops. This has really shifted the general perspective of Cuban films over the past decade.
Overall I really enjoyed this event, and I’m glad that I was able to learn all that I did about Cuba.
That’s so interesting how in the 1990’s Cuban artists who weren’t sanctioned by the government couldn’t afford to buy art supplies, so they did performance art instead. It really makes you realize how we can’t take for granted our First Amendment rights and our ability to create art here in the United States.