| In June of 2005, upon receiving a curatorial prize at the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts, I took advantage of my 15 minutes of fame in Slovenian lands in order to propose a show of Cuban art to Aleksander Bassin, director of the Mestna Galerija, or the City Museum. He accepted my proposal, and we got started. That’s how “Lista de espera (Waiting List),” the first, and less ambitious version of the current project, was born. I decided to develop an idea I had been interested in since 2001 when I received a grant to document the Ludwig Collection of Cuban art. The nucleus of this collection is located at the Ludwig Forum in Aachen, Germany. |  |
A Timely Introduction – Elvis Fuentes
In June of 2005, upon receiving a curatorial prize at the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts, I took advantage of my 15 minutes of fame in Slovenian lands in order to propose a show of Cuban art to Aleksander Bassin, director of the Mestna Galerija, or the City Museum. He accepted my proposal, and we got started. That’s how “Lista de espera (Waiting List),” the first, and less ambitious version of the current project, was born.
I decided to develop an idea I had been interested in since 2001 when I received a grant to document the Ludwig Collection of Cuban art. The nucleus of this collection is located at the Ludwig Forum in Aachen, Germany. In surveying the collection, I realized that, despite their popularity in the 80s, process artworks and collective art projects were notably absent. There was also no documentation on performances and ephemeral projects—some of which were standard when the Ludwig Forum began to collect Cuban art—such as pioneer works by Leandro Soto, Hexágono, the Puré and Provisional groups or the celebrated Juego de pelota or Ball Game.” Rather than encouraging the creation of experimental, ephemeral and critical proposals, the collecting trend of the time ultimately set the tone for the art market’s arrival to Cuba in the early 90s and, in doing so, went in an entirely different direction.
Interestingly enough, however, many artists in Cuba nevertheless continued producing precisely this kind of work. One is thus forced to ask the question: “Exactly what happened here?” How did that spirit survive and under what new circumstances was it developing? What’s more, how did artists respond to the new censorship situation and to the arrival of the art market in order to achieve continuity with the preceding generation? I must make clear that this spirit was present in the work of artists who were younger, and whose works received less attention or was created in smaller spaces.
“Killing Time” explores the continuities and discontinuities existing between three generations of artists, one of which has resided mostly outside of the country for more than a decade. The thematic premise has been the concept of time, with its varied notions as they are associated with experimental art practices such as the ephemeral, the provisional and the transcendent, among others. In order to update the art scene of the island, I invited the curator Yuni Villalonga into the project. It afterward occurred to us that it was undoubtedly necessary to widen our scope, transcending merely aesthetics by also including economic, sociological and political issues in the mix, all of which might provide the visitor with a deeper understanding of the Cuban phenomenon. After coming across the research carried out by Glexis Novoa on performance art created in Cuba in the 80s—which was exhibited at the Miami Dade Community College Gallery in 1998—we invited him to join the team and to form a special section in the show.
When Ben Rodríguez-Cubeñas found out about this project, he immediately offered the support of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and Cuban Artist Fund in order to bring the show to New York. It was mainly thanks to him that this became possible. Likewise, the directors of Exit Art, Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo, opened the doors of this terrific institution to the project and adopted it as their own, to the point that they encouraged us to expand it, especially the performance art section, in keeping with the tradition of that exhibition space.
A Culture of Records
Cuba’s Fidel Castro holds modern history’s record for longest time in power as well as the record for the greatest number of assassinations that ever have been planned against one person (638 murder attempts). He is also known for almost 50 years of opposition to imperialism and half a century of revolution in the face of Cuba’s “neighbor to the North.” In fact, Cuba holds several Guinness World Records, including the longest speech in the history of the United Nations—Fidel Castro’s, of course, the cow that produced the most milk in one day, the largest simultaneous chess match and the longest time controlling and kicking a ball. Here is a society that fought to eradicate the vestiges of capitalism but that nevertheless persevered as a culture of excess and of world records.
Following this “tradition,” the show “Killing Time” gathers a record number of contemporary Cuban artists (87), including several artist groups, which elevate the number of beneficiaries to over 100. It is true that not everything that is included here are physical artworks since a great part are ephemeral works, interventions and performances, but those certainly count as well. The pieces have traveled all the way from Havana, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, North Carolina, Ohio, Vancouver, Mexico City, Puerto Rico, Madrid, Paris, Athens, Zurich, Cologne and, of course, New York. Many are veritable individual and/or collective feats.
