“She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.” – Unknown

Art should evoke emotion within you. While I believe it should look nice for the most part, I think we, as humans, are very good at confusing looking nice for having meaning. However, there is a place for beauty to be admired. But, I do that enough. At this point in my life, I’m looking for art that makes me think.

As a student of the Industrial and Labor Relations School, I don’t get the opportunity to be in the presence of art. In fact, there are days where I believe that art is easy and simple. And devalued the passionate and expertise that art requires.

Last week, I attended an event that explored art in contemporary Cuba. Of all the artist that were discussed, Ernesto Pujol left the greatest impact. For him, art was how he lived his life. Art provided meaning and at times, clarity. As a homosexual male, Pujol didn’t fit anywhere. As someone who knows what it means to be disregarded because of societal structures, I have been pushed to question who I am. Pujol’s exploration of his identity is evident in his work.

This piece displays Pujol’s fascination with whiteness and masculinity. Whiteness and the varying connotations of purity, innocence are examined in his work. Through baseball, a masculine sport, he found a way to express the limitations he felt as a child. Having the baseballs also placed in a cooking bowl juxtaposed to the mitt illustrates his own views on gender stereotypes during his upbringing. Knowing his deep interest in the color white, the dusty baseballs indicate to me that he felt that the game of baseball (or the overall gender construct) played a role in his loss of innocence.

Art is open to interpretation. And thats what I enjoyed most about this experience. I was getting the opportunity to engage with art on my own terms. Like Pujol, many things have been  decided for me. But, I hope that art and the various other forms of art that I interact with will give me the space to be fully me.

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.

How interesting it is to look at the impression of a land from a lens not your own.

To see Cuba is to see the conglomeration of Cold-War era newspaper articles, radio broadcasts, and reiterations through high-school history classes.

But to really see Cuba, is to see the perspectives of Cubans, and of those who left Cuba but have their roots still touching the island.

Film and arts; sculptures, pictures;

All add to the culture of Cuba, add to the collective voice, and help to form a truer picture of the country that hid behind the curtain of the Cold War for a lifetime.

Originally when I signed up for the event, I did not look carefully at the event blurb and thought that I would be touring around the Johnson Museum. Besides seeing different phenomenal art pieces, what else can we do in the Museum? However, the event turns out to be a very educational talk on contemporary art in Cuba and the messages behind them. Before we dive into the nitty-gritty discussion of the art, we were given a brief overview of contemporary Cuban history. Having a very limited knowledge of Cuban History, I learnt a lot new things from the talk. For example, I learnt about Operation Peter Pan. Operation Peter Pan was an American-organized program which was first developed after the Cuban Revolution occurred and turned Cuba communist. Many Cuban parents send their children to the United States in fear that the new government was planning to send minors to the Soviet Union to serve in work camps. Besides learning about the history, we were shown an artwork that expresses the sadness of the children having to leave their native country. The artwork is not just a painting. It was an art piece where there is a white-colored sketch of the cuban territory on the floor and there are white clothes on top of the sketch, which illustrates how young Cuban were forced to fly off their own country to somewhere on their own because of the revolution.

After going to the talk, I found that artworks do not only express the artists’ emotions but can also help illustrate the social problems and make the audience to learn more about the problems they are concerned. Overall, I thought it was a really good experience and I am glad that I stumbled upon this talk

The Art in Contemporary Cuba event was one that surprised me! Going to the Johnson, I anticipated viewing the works of Cuban artists on a lovely tour. Instead, I was met with a professor who taught language and a diligent student of Cuban art. In their presentation, their perspectives mixed in the most interesting of ways, which allowed for us to explore the various forms of Cuban art and the development of expression through Cuban art.

However, of all of the parts of Cuban culture, politics and art that we explored, this piece by Ernesto Pujol. His work not only served to be self-reflective, but also worked to provide perspective of culture experienced by Cubans not in the country. To see the strings connected between one’s personal experience, to a broader culture was fascinating. Even more so these strings were connected on many levels because he uses religion. If I have not learned one thing about Latino and Hispanic cultures, similar to Black cultures, religion is significant to communities and personal development. Not every person encounters or has similar regard for religion in the same way, but are nonetheless affected by the presence of religion.

Another facet of this piece that I found fascinating is that it’s all white. This facet is even more interesting when considering that it’s the first within a series which inevitably leads his garments to be Black, which is significant in Catholicism order. He could have reversed the order in which he transitioned the colors. Also noted in the presentation, and true based upon personal research, Pujol is very specific about locations; it is referred to as “site-specific”.

Overall, there were many things to take from the presentation, but what stuck with me most was the talent and expression of Ernesto Pujol – a phenomenally bold artist.

I always enjoy events at the Johnson, but I wasn’t exactly sure what I was getting myself into with this one. It proved to be a very interesting talk, dealing with art in Cuba and the differences in expression between artists that live on the island and artists who are part of the diaspora in America. I found the implicit contradiction of artists to be fascinating: artists are one of the only occupations in Cuba that can sell products to foreigners, giving them more freedom and monetary power than most, but they are also some of the most heavily controlled by the government. The ultimate struggle between different artists is how they are choosing to remember and interpret the revolution. Some celebrate the government and remember Castro as a young hero, while others oppose the regime and view Castro as an aging dictator. I thought the art by those who oppose the revolution was particularly moving, especially the “Children of Peter Pan” piece.

My one complaint is that I do not know much about Cuban artists and film makers, so it seemed like the presenters were going very quickly and it was a little difficult to keep up at first. However, they did a pretty good job of explaining things, so I still enjoyed the experience.

Today I attended an event at the Johnson Museum about Cuban art.  I assumed we would be viewing some pictures or paintings and hearing something about their artists.  But instead, we were treated to a talk by Sonja Gandert and Enrique González-Conty.  The talk opened by explaining that a lot of what is dealt with in Cuban art is “Memory Wars.”  This concept of memory wars deals with how Cubans choose to remember the revolution and the age of Castro.  It also deals with the different views of Cubans in Cuba and Cubans who fled to Miami.  Art from these different places deals with different things.

The talk began by discussing memory wars as a concept, and then branched off to discuss the artist whose work will be featured in the Johnson in a month.  This artist has had work presented in Cuba and in the United States, and much of it is commentary on the revolution.  One piece that stood out to me related to Operation Peter Pan, a movement to get children out of Cuba.  The work had a sketch of Cuba on the floor, with hanging small white shirts above it in rows.  The piece that was located in the Johnson, that we got to see, was a picture of the artist dressed in a nun’s habit.  This was partially a commentary on the artist’s time cloistered, and on other themes.

We then heard more about cinema as related to Cuban revolution.  One movie that was specifically mentioned, based on a book, was named Memories of Underdevelopment.  The format of this film intrigued me — it was a fictional story with bits of documentary interspersed.  It had the fiction story line, but also contained the revolution in it.  I think this is a very interesting way to do a movie.  We learned that Cuban film was very dependent on the government for funding, until digital mediums came about to make producing films easier.  And we heard about a sequel to Memories of Underdevelopment — Memories of Overdevelopment.

We then finished up the talk by hearing about performance art.  Performance art is the most done in Cuba because it costs the least.  While paper may be difficult to get a hold of at times, same for film or digital cameras, performance art can be done with just a human talking.  We talked in particular about Tania Bruguera, an internationally known Cuban performance artist.  She has done many different performance pieces, involving speaking out when people would not hear her.  I thought her works were very interesting.

The talk then ended with a Q&A session, where we heard a bit more about different Cuban artists.  One thing that stood out to me during the Q&A was the fact that much of Cuban art ends up being political because people expect it to be political.  There exist non-political Cuban art, but it is much harder to find.  This was very strange to me, but also it sort of made sense, as people can tend to conform to what others think they do, in performance mediums.  I was not expecting to learn as much as I did from this talk, and I am very glad I went.