Visual Artists in Havana

Just got back from a week in Havana, Cuba. It was an incredible experience getting to explore the city, which is gorgeous, crumbling, vital, and eclectic.

Our group was on a cultural-exchange trip, so we did lots of activities centered around dance, music, theatre, film, and painting. Several of the visual artists we met have really stuck in my mind. Any one of them could create a terrific tarot deck, if they were inspired to!

We visited painter and collage artist Sandra Ramos in her home, which is one of the most tranquil places I've ever set foot. Ramos has exhibited internationally; you can see samples of her work here. She often uses an Alice-in-Wonderland-like central girl figure, sometimes twisting the girl's body into the shape of the island of Cuba itself. She also makes neat stereoscopic viewers that you can look into and see revolving, fragmented images, sort of like a self-twisting kaleidoscope.

We also checked out the studio of the lovely and gifted Rene Francisco, who does cool installations. One famous series involves Francisco collecting squeezed-out tubes of government-issued toothpaste (in Cuba, every family receives a ration of supplies every month, including anonymous-looking metallic tubes of toothpaste). Francisco transforms the tubes into little headless people; in his Tubo Sutra series, the tube people mate with one another, in every conceivable combination.


And here's me, very happy to be standing close to artist and printmaker Daniel Rodriguez. As far as I know, Daniel doesn't have a website. A lot of Cubans don't spend much time online, or even have access to the Internet. For those who do have computer access, the Internet is pretty tightly regulated by the government; as in China, Google exists in a somewhat censored version, where certain controversial terms and topics will yield no results. This is difficult in terms of allowing the Cuban people access to global information, but one positive effect is that all the Cubans I met spend a lot more time dancing and socializing (face-to-face) than they do online. This feels pretty healthy to me.

Anyway, I got to meet Daniel in the Gráfica printing studio in Old Havana, doing lithography. Flickr user ZedZap has a beautiful shot and a nice description of the studio building here. I bought a print of Daniel's called "Las Simetrías del Alma" ("Symmetries of the Soul"). Being in Cuba definitely made my own soul relax and breathe more deeply.