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Samurai, 2009 |
Curators:
Alejandro de la Fuente is Research Professor of History and Latin American Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. His work on slavery and race relations in Cuba and Latin America has been published in Spanish, English, French, Italian, German and Portuguese. He is the author of A Nation for All: Race, Inequality and Politics in Twentieth Century Cuba (UNC Press, 2001) and of Havana and the Atlantic in the Sixteenth Century (UNC Press, 2008).
Elio Rodríguez Valdés is a Cuban artist whose work explores the intersections of race, gender, nationalism, and globalization. His work, which has been showcased in numerous collective and solo exhibits in Cuba, Spain, the United States, Belgium, Great Britain, Brazil, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, and Israel, is part of museum and private collections around the world.
Artists (links to their pages on AfroCubaWeb):
Pedro Alvarez
Manuel Arenas
Belkis Ayon
Maria Magdalena Campos
Juan Roberto Diago
Alexis Esquivel
Armando Manriño
Marta Maria Perez
Rene Peña
Douglas Perez
Elio Rodriguez
Joae A. Toirac
Meria Marrero
Invitacion/Invitation
Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam, La
Habana, 10 abril-30 mayo 2010 |
Queloides - Curator's Talk and Gallery Opening
Wednesday, January 25, 2012 - 4:00pm - 6:00pm
Event will be held in the Hiphop Archive, followed by a reception and viewing in the Rudenstine Gallery:
W. E. B. Du Bois Institute, 104 Mount Auburn Street, 3R, Cambridge, MA 02138
Guest Curators: Alejandro de la Fuente and Elio Rodríguez Valdés
Queloides is an art exhibit on the persistence of racism and racial discrimination in contemporary Cuba and elsewhere in the world. Despite the social transformations implemented by the Cuban revolutionary government since the early 1960s, racism continues to be a deep wound in Cuban society, one that generates countless social and cultural scars. Read more: dubois.fas.harvard.edu/spring-2012-queloides-race-and-racism-cuban-contemporary-art.
Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburgh, 10/10 - 2/11
The 8th Floor Gallery, New York, 4/11 - 7/11
'Queloides': Artists Explore Racism in Cuba 6/14/2011 The Root: by Alejandro de la Fuente, with video - "Despite the social transformations implemented by the Cuban revolutionary government since the early 1960s, racism continues to be a deep wound in Cuban society, one that generates countless social and cultural scars. Racist attitudes, ideas and behaviors have gained strength in Cuban society during the last two decades, during the deep economic crisis known as "the Special Period," which followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. As the Cuban economy became dollarized, and competition for scarce jobs and resources intensified, racial discrimination and racial inequality increased. White Cubans began to use racist arguments to deny blacks access to the most attractive sectors of the economy (such as tourism), those in which it was possible to earn dollars or other hard currencies."
Rafael
Lopez Ramos, "La Huella del Latigo" Los Lirios del Jardin 4/19/2011 : "A
propósito de la recién inaugurada edición del proyecto Queloides, dialogué vía
correo eléctronico con sus curadores Alejandro de la Fuente y Elio Rodríguez
Valdés acerca del tema en que se centra la exposición y otros detalles
relacionados con esta."
“Queloides”
in New York: An Interview with the Curators 4/19/2011 Cuban
Art Newsx: "Queloides is a long-term collective project in Cuban art.
It’s not a project that belongs to me or to Elio, or to any of the artists who
are exhibitng now. This is a project that was born in the late 1990s. The first
exhibition was curated by Alexis Esquivel and Omar Pascual Castillo. It was a
modest exhibit, in 1997, at Casa de Africa in Havana. It got very little press
coverage, and very little recognition. Then there was a second, bigger exhibit
organized by the late Ariel Ribeaux Diago in 1999. Ariel Ribeaux began to expand
the project—gave it additional theoretical coherence. And then of course Ariel
Ribeaux died a few years later and the project got suspended. Nothing else
happened. When I learned about these exhibits, the first thing that caught my
eye was how little information was available about the exhibits themselves, and
about what I saw as a very important movement in Cuban art, and in Cuban culture
more generally. But the exhibits have been ignored—and continue to be,
actually—in the annals of Cuban art. If you look at the best books of Cuban
art, you’ll see that in most cases the exhibits are not even mentioned."
Cuban
Art On the Move 4/1/2011 ArtNews: "In 2004,
curators at a Pittsburgh contemporary-art museum known as the Mattress Factory
planned to bring in artists from Cuba for a group show. The exhibition would be
called “Cuba: Artists in Residence.” The Bush administration prevented the
artists from coming, but the curators ended up keeping the exhibition’s name
as a protest. With more relaxed travel rules now in place, the museum brought
nine of the 13 artists to install their works in an even bigger show of
contemporary Cuban art, which opened in October 2010."
Queloides/Keloids:
Race and Racism in Cuban Contemporary Art 3/1/2011 Art
Nexus: "Racism is a worldwide problem and traces can still be found
even in developed countries where contemporary waves of migration happen. This
is particularly prevalent in countries where there has been a history of racial
confrontations and discrimination. One of these countries is Cuba, and despite
the government¿s claim that racism was abolished in the 1960s, reality shows
otherwise." [Great to hear there is no more racism in the US!]
Alejandro
de la Fuente y Michael Olijnyk nos hablan sobre "Queloides" 2/26/2011 YouTube: "Tuyomasyo
Art presenta: Alejandro de la Fuente y Michael Olijnyk nos hablan sobre "Queloides"
Race and Racism in Cuban Contemporary Art. Michael Olijnyk Co-director de
Mattress Factory y Alejandro de la Fuente historiador y curador de la muestra."
Cuban
art exhibit at Mattress Factory winning accolades 2/18/2011 Pittsburgh
Post Gazette: "It isn't easy to pull off a ground-breaking exhibition,
but by several measures "Queloides: Race and Racism in Cuban Contemporary
Art" was worth the trouble."
"Queloides"
Catalog 1/6/2011 Matress Factory Shop: "Queloides:
Race and Racism in Cuban Contemporary Art," companion volume to the
exhibition of the same name at the Mattress Factory Museum in Pittsburgh, PA,
documents the complete exhibition in the United States as well as the previous
Queloides exhibitions in Cuba. Edited by Cuban scholar and Queloides co-curator,
Alejandro de la Fuente, this 172-page full-color bilingual (English and Spanish)
catalog contains four essays: “Introduction: The New Afro-Cuban Cultural
Movement,” by Alejandro de la Fuente; “Queloides: A History,” by Omar
Pascual Castillo; “Race and Racism in Cuban Contemporary Art” by Odette
Casamayor; and “Racism: Parody and Postcommunism” by Dennys Matos. The
“Queloides: Race and Racism in Cuban Contemporary Art” catalog also includes
extensive full-color photographic documentation of works in the exhibitions at
the Wifredo Lam Center and the Mattress Factory and biographies of each of the
13 artists."
The
Mattress Factory, Museum of Contemporary Art, Pittsburgh, Presents Contemporary
Cuban Art Exhibit 12/29/2010 Artes Magazine
“Queloides:
Race and Racism in Cuban Contemporary Art” - A groundbreaking exhibition makes
waves in Pittsburgh 11/9/2010 Cuban Art News: "The
whole of the exhibition plays out these issues of representation and more,
mainly grounded in the cultural and iconographic specificities of Cuba's history
and present. The paintings of Alexis Esquivel mix layers of irony and specific
detail to comment on Cuba-U.S. politics. For example, in Smile you won! (2010),
the face of Obama, fragmented as if in a faded wall-poster and featureless apart
from the instantly recognisable grin, turns in the direction of two fighting
boxers (a major sport in Cuba), one with black skin and white shorts, the other,
his negative, with white skin and black shorts."
US
Welcomes Cuban Artists 10/25/2010 Art in America: "The
ongoing embargo and travel restrictions between the United States and Cuba have
for years made cultural exchange extremely difficult. But under the Obama
administration, frosty relations have begun to thaw, and the border has become
more porous. Among those Cuban nationals recently issued visas to enter the U.S.
are nine visual artists, eight of whom were to begin residencies in
mid-September [shortly after this issue went to press] at the Mattress Factory
in Pittsburgh, where they are creating site-specific installations for the
exhibition “Queloides/Keloids: Race and Racism in Cuban Contemporary Art”
[Oct. 15, 2010-Feb. 27, 2011]. The ninth artist, Yoan Capote, is traveling to
New York for his first U.S. solo show, at Jack Shainman Gallery [Oct. 14-Nov.
13]. In 2006, Capote received a Guggenheim fellowship but was barred from
entering the U.S. to accept the award. Now, four years later, he has been
granted an extended visa allowing him to stay in the U.S. to undertake the
fellowship."
The Audacity of a
Cuban Curator 10/21/2010 Havana Times: "[Havana
Times:] You’ve been banned from Cuba due to the exhibition. What happened?
[Alejandro:] We presented this project to Cuba’s cultural authorities in 2008.
I wanted to show it first in Havana because I didn’t want to do it only for
foreign consumption. I understood that this was a polemic project, but I also
thought that the situation had changed in the island. Racism is something that
has been recognized even by Fidel Castro, who had acknowledged publicly that
racism has not been solved. The cultural authorities were never quite
enthusiastic about the project, but they said we could do it. The authorities
had no chance to select the artists. I think several of the bureaucrats started
having nightmares that this might endanger their positions and their privileges
or that state security may call them. Maybe they did call them."
Cuban
Artists Grapple with Local Racism on a World Stage Read more:10/19/2010 Utne: "Starting
in 1991, numerous Cuban musicians, writers, painters, performers, and academics
began to use art to process the troubling changes taking place in their country.
For instance, the emergence of Cuban hip hop dates to the Special Period, with
rap artists driven to write about their everyday struggles. Around the same
time, Cuban visual artists began to fixate on a particular social issue. In
paintings, photographs, installations, sculptures, videos—examples of which
are included in “Queloides”—artists focused on finding ways to ridicule
and to dismantle the so-called racial differences in Cuba."
Sugerencias
para una dermatología nacional 10/17/2010 Enuentros
"Queloides"
Race and racism in Cuban Contemporary Art. 9/20/2010 YouTube
Racism in
Contemporary Cuba Explored in Mattress Factory Exhibition, Cocurated by Pitt’s
Alejandro de la Fuente 9/13/2010 Pitt Chronicle
EXHIBITION:
QUELOIDES/KELOIDS - Race and Racism in Cuban Contemporary Art 9/6/2010 Mattress
Factory, Pittsburgh: October 15, 2010 – February 27, 2011
Queloides:
Race and Racism 9/1/2010 Islas: by María I. Faguaga
Iglesias, Historian and anthropologist, Havana, Cuba. Islas receives NED
funding. - "The conceptual and socially committed art we see in Queloides
is not gratuitous, even if many who are consciously or subconsciously racist may
think it somewhat forced or uncomfortable— a much too elaborated stretch.
Cuban television took one month to cover Queloides, although for no apparent
reason it had to be visited from the rear of the building, as used to be the
case before 1959, when black and mulatto people had to do just so. Not too few
now would like to see that happen now. This kind of observation or comment can
always garner one accusations of being too sensitive, racist, and divisive, to
which is added no one sees that but you,you and your bad intentions and your
habit of harping on racism. These are the facts."
SENTENCIADA
AL SILENCIO 6/18/2010 Primavera Digital: Por Juan
Antonio Madrazo Luna, CIR - "La promoción de la muestra más allá del
silencio de la prensa oficial, estuvo vedada al contacto con los medios
audiovisuales. La reactivación incipiente del debate, aun no rezuma honestidad.
No se garantiza la libertad de contenido, la transparencia de interrogantes y
respuestas. El abordaje de este tema es recibido con la indiferencia sarcástica
de una demagogia blanda. Los medios de comunicación no responden ni ayudan al
emplazamiento de una demanda social. La prensa como siempre sigue de espaldas a
lo que ocurría. La única publicación cubana que hizo una reseña sobre la
muestra fue La Jiribilla digital, totalmente vedada para la mayoría de los
lectores cubanos."
Queloides
- Raza y Racismo en el Arte Cubano Contemporáneo 5/1/2010 Universes
in Universe: "Después de décadas de silencio oficial, las
discusiones sobre "raza" y racismo han tomado un protagonismo en la
Cuba contemporánea. Desde los años 1990, numerosos intelectuales - músicos,
escritores, artistas plásticos, actores y académicos - han comenzado algo
anteriormente impensable: denunciar la persistencia de la discriminación racial
en la sociedad socialista cubana."
Raza
y racismo en el arte contemporáneo Queloides: más que una herida 4/17/2010 Jiribilla: "La
muestra que presenta por estos días el Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo
Lam, se conecta con la tradición antropológica y sociocultural del arte cubano,
que en el abordaje de la raza, ha tenido exponentes de la talla del propio autor
de “La jungla”, Agustín Cárdenas, los artistas de Volumen I, Elso Padilla
o Manuel Mendive. Esta intervención continúa, además, ese propósito
arriesgado de abordar desde la plástica un tema tan espinoso como el de la
discriminación y la racialidad, con raigambre profunda, despojándose de lo
folclórico y lo banal."
Queloides:
la cicatriz renovada del racismo en Cuba 4/16/2010 CubaEncuentro: "El
día 16 de abril se inaugura en el Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam, de
la Habana, la exposición Queloides: Raza y Racismo en el Arte Cubano Contemporáneo
(www.queloides-exhibit.com). La exposición reúne a doce artistas que, durante
años, han proyectado, desde su obra, una preocupación sostenida acerca de la
persistencia del racismo en la sociedad cubana y que han intentado discutir públicamente
los efectos culturales y sociales de esa llaga, infamante e incómoda, de la
cubanidad."
Blackness
and Racism in Cuba: International Exhibitions Shows in Havana, Pittsburgh, and
Johannesburg 4/12/2010 Cuban Art Newsx: "Half a
century ago, the Cuban Revolution brought about immediate positive changes for
Cubans of African descent, as the country undertook the task of eliminating
racial discrimination at workplaces, social centers, educational institutions,
and in official policy. The government implemented concrete measures to more
fully integrate blacks into the island’s social and economic life, from which
had they had been more or less excluded since the turn of the 20th century. But
lately, debates held across the island have pointed up the contradictions in
this stated policy of equality, including the harsh realities of everyday racism
and the persistence of white dominance of official history."
Queloides/Keloids:
Raza y Racismo en el Arte Cubano Contemporáneo 4/10/2010 Negra
Cubana
The
New Afro-Cuban Cultural Movement and the Debate on Race in Contemporary Cuba 12/4/2008 Journal
of Latin American Studies: "This paper analyses recent debates on race
and racism in Cuba in the context of changing economic and social conditions in
the island. Since the early 1990s, and largely in response to the negative
effects that the so-called Special Period had on race relations, a group of
artists and intellectuals began denouncing the persistence of racist practices
and stereotypes in Cuban society. Although they are not organised around a
single program or institution, these musicians, visual artists, writers,
academics and activists share common grievances about racism and its social
effects. It is in this sense that they constitute a new Afro-Cuban cultural
movement. It is too early to fully assess the impact of this movement, but these
artists and intellectuals have been largely successful in raising awareness
about this problem and bringing it to the attention of authorities and the Cuban
public."
| El día 16 de abril se inaugura en el Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam, de la Habana, la exposición Queloides: Raza y Racismo en el Arte Cubano Contemporáneo
(www.queloides-exhibit.com). La exposición reúne a doce artistas que, durante años, han proyectado, desde su obra, una preocupación sostenida acerca de la persistencia del racismo en la sociedad cubana y que han intentado discutir públicamente los efectos culturales y sociales de esa llaga, infamante e incómoda, de la cubanidad. Los artistas que participan en Queloides no están interesados en reciclar la imagen tradicional, edulcorada y placentera, de la nación fraterna, sino en examinar y destacar las grietas que, particularmente desde la crisis de los años noventa, han asolado a ese modelo de nación. Son grietas económicas, sociales y culturales que han terminado por escindir a los cubanos en grupos con oportunidades y futuros diferentes, que han producido y producen cada día cubanos de "firmas" y de cemento, cubanos de carrito y de camello, cubanos ricos y cubanos pobres, cubanos de dólar y cubanos de peso, cubanos blancos y cubanos negros. Una vez producidos (y a pesar de serlo), esos grupos son exhibidos con desfachatez positivista para afirmar que las diferencias son obra de la naturaleza, cuestión de células y de misteriosas secuencias proteicas. Contra el acido desoxirribonucleico (el ADN), no se puede. De hecho, y esto es algo que se escucha con frecuencia en las tertulias habaneras, la revolución cubana es la prueba mejor de que las diferencias raciales son inquebrantables y fijas. Los que así piensan argumentan que si después de varias décadas de planes sociales igualitarios y de oportunidades educacionales los negros siguen apostando por la cabilla, el bisneo o el invento, tendrá que ser porque están biológicamente predestinados para eso. Tendrá que ser porque ese es el lugar que les corresponde en el orden natural de las cosas. Porque hay una tara insuperable. Para ellos, mandarria y tambor. Para los otros, el ordenador y el
arpa.
Es para contrarrestar esa narrativa redundante, circular y degradante, que el proyecto Queloides ha sido concebido. Los queloides son cicatrices patológicas que aparecen en el lugar de una lesión producida por incisiones o heridas traumáticas. Estas cicatrices pueden ocurrir en la epidermis de cualquier ser humano, pero muchos en Cuba creen que las mismas aparecen solo en la piel “negra.” Es decir, los queloides son invocados en el saber popular como evidencia "científica" de que las diferencias raciales son reales, evidencia de que los individuos "negros" y "blancos" pertenecen a grupos raciales con constituciones genéticas delimitadas y diferentes. De esta forma el título de la exposición se refiere, por una parte, a la persistencia de los estereotipos raciales y, por otra, a los traumáticos efectos sociales y culturales del racismo. A fin de cuentas, estamos hablando de cicatrices y heridas, de incisiones y pieles desgarradas, de tejidos sociales que intentan reconstituirse ante el efecto demoledor y frustrante del racismo y la discriminación racial. Cada persona que es rechazada para un empleo atractivo por no tener una "apariencia agradable," o porque el encargado de contratar asume que ciertos trabajos no son apropiados para "negros," es un queloide en el tejido social cubano. Una afrenta. Una vergüenza. Cada afrodescendiente detenido arbitrariamente por la policía y obligado a mostrar papeles de identidad, por precaución lombrosiana, es una bofetada a la nación. Cada chiste racista, cada alusión a palestinos y negrones, cada aforismo denigrante, es un zarpazo al sueño de una cubanidad integrada y mejor. Este ha sido el sueno de los hijos más ilustres de Cuba, el sueño de Juan Gualberto Gómez, Rafael Serra y Martín Morúa Delgado; el sueño de Lino D'Ou, Gustavo Urrutia y Ángel Pinto; el sueno de José Martí, Antonio Maceo y Nicolás Guillen; el sueño de Evaristo Estenoz y Pedro Ivonet. Nuestro sueño. Mi sueño. Es desde ese sueño compartido que, junto al artista Elio Rodríguez Valdés (El Macho), concebimos una nueva edición de Queloides. Nueva porque esta exposición forma parte de un proyecto curatorial desarrollado por Alexis Esquivel y Omar Pascual Castillo en un primer Queloides (Casa de África, 1997) y retomado por el desaparecido crítico y escritor Ariel Ribeaux Diago, que fue el curador del segundo Queloides, expuesto en el Centro de Desarrollo de Artes Visuales de la Habana en 1999. Ribeaux fue también el organizador de una exposición intermedia, Ni Músicos ni Deportistas, que fue acogida por el Centro Provincial de Artes Plásticas y Diseño de la Habana en diciembre de 1997. Lo que estoy diciendo es que Queloides es un proyecto colectivo de larga duración, en el que han colaborado numerosos artistas plásticos, intelectuales, críticos, escritores e instituciones culturales cubanas. El propósito siempre ha sido, como expresó Esquivel en alguna ocasión, ofrecer una visión en la que los afrodescendientes y sus culturas no fueran simplemente raíces ("pretérito investigable") de lo cubano, sino actores sociales con retos, metas e historias atendibles y específicas. Gente que labora, estudia, hace el amor y sueña, como cualquier otra, pero cuya existencia está marcada por la huella maldita y lacerante del racismo. Estos son los afrodescendientes que, bajo el impacto demoledor del llamado Período Especial, encontraron obstáculos, nuevos en algunos casos, reciclados en otros, que limitaron significativamente su ascenso social. La "raza oscura y discriminada" del grupo de rap Hermanos de Causa, la que no ha podido acceder a instalaciones y a espacios sociales privilegiados, dolarizados y blanqueados. La de los albañiles y los presos. Algunos de los artistas participantes en esta edición de Queloides han estado en todas y cada una de estas exposiciones: Elio, Esquivel, René Peña, Douglas Pérez y Manuel Arenas. Otros, como Juan Roberto Diago, Pedro Álvarez y José A. Toirac, lo han hecho en alguna de las muestras anteriores. Armando Mariño, Belkis Ayón, Marta María Pérez Bravo y Magdalena Campos Pons se unen al proyecto Queloides por primera vez. Ya era hora de que lo hicieran, dada la calidad e importancia de sus propuestas artísticas. Las obras de Álvarez y de Ayón se incluyen por dos razones obvias. Primero, porque ambos artistas hicieron una contribución fundamental a esta conversación sobre raza, racismo y cubanidad, una contribución cuya vigencia es necesario renovar. Segundo, porque al presentarla, al hacer su obra presente, decimos que no a su ausencia inaceptable. A diferencia de las ediciones anteriores, Queloides III va a ser presentado después fuera de la isla, en el Mattress Factory Museum de Pittsburgh, en Estados Unidos. El Mattress Factory es una institución cultural de vanguardia que ha estado siguiendo los derroteros del arte cubano durante años y que ya organizó, en el 2004, una exposición muy importante titulada Cuba: Artists in Residence (Cuba: Artistas en Residencia). Dicha exposición, realizada en tiempos en que la administración del Presidente George W. Bush criminalizó las relaciones culturales y familiares con Cuba, incluía figuras muy destacadas del arte cubano contemporáneo, como Iván y Yoán Capote, Ángel Delgado, José Emilio Fuentes Fonseca, René Francisco, Erik García Gómez, Luis Gómez, Glenda León, Sandra Ramos, Lázaro Saavedra y José A. Toirac. En colaboración con el
Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos de la Universidad de
Pittsburgh, una institución que ha jugado un papel fundamental en el desarrollo de los estudios cubanos en los Estados Unidos, el Mattress Factory acoge ahora a Queloides, no solo por la calidad de los artistas participantes, sino porque los temas de raza, discriminación y racismo constituyen una preocupación global, que trasciende a la isla. El racismo, eso que el gran sociólogo y activista afronorteamericano W.E.B. Du Bois calificó como "el problema" del siglo XX, continúa produciendo cicatrices patológicas, continúa generando queloides, en pleno siglo XXI. Y no sólo en Cuba. |
/Enlaces
Ni Musicos ni deportistas : sobre los imagines del negro en el arte cubano, escrito por Ariel Ribeaux
Yoruban Contributions to the Literature on Keloids
P. OMo-DARE, M.D., Ch.M.,
Department of Surgery, University of Lagos,
Surulere, Nigeria, September, 1973
A study based on Ifa tradition and Yoruba art. This is apparently a Nigerian classic, because it is duly referenced in this recent survey:
Cutaneous adornment in the Yoruba of south-western Nigeria – past and present
www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118619244/PDFSTART
Adekunle O. George, MBBS, FMCP, Adebola O. Ogunbiyi, MBBS, FMCP, FWACP, and Olaniyi O. M. Daramola, MBBS, FWACP
From the Dermatology Division, Department of Medicine, University College Hospital, Ibadan, and Dermatology Division, Department of Medicine, University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital, Ilorin, Nigeria
International Journal of Dermatology
Volume 45 Issue 1, Pages 23 - 27
Published Online: 5 Jan 2006
Without Masks: Contemporary Afro-Cuban Art: South Africa and Canada, includes some of the same artists and related themes
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