“MachA, VaronA, MasculinA” La Femme Artiste dans la Barbe de L’art Cubain

La Femme Artiste dans la Barbe de L’art Cubain

Date

June 5 – 20, 2014

Artists

Adislén Reyes, Grethell Rasúa, Julio César Llópiz, Levi Orta, and Naivy Pérez.

Curated by

Analays Álvarez Hernández

Gallery

Estudio XX

Location

Montreal, Canada

Curatorial Statement

MachA, VaronA, MasculinA : la femme artiste dans la barbe de L’art cubain

The popular expression Macho, varón, masculino! (Male, boy, masculine!) – pardon the redundancy – testifies to the place occupied in Cuba by the social construction of virility. To strengthen and affirm male identity, this typically Cuban expression foregrounds an interdependence between virility and heterosexuality, and on virility and domination. To give a title and tone to this project that focuses on the Cuban woman artist in a largely male-dominated society, we have intentionally feminized the expression in question.

If the socio-political changes realized by the Cuban Revolution throughout the 1960s gradually provided major advances for women’s rights in general, it took much longer for women artists to break into the Cuban art world. It wasn’t until the 1980s, as part of a broader revival of national culture, that there was a significant turning point in the interrogation of issues concerning women artists, by women artists (Marta María Pérez Bravo, Ana Albertina Delgado, María Magdalena Campos, Consuelo Castañeda, Rocío García, etc.).

Cultural institutions followed this « feminist blast-off » as best they could. At the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana (MNBA), pantheon of Cuban art, artists such as Juana Borrero (1877-1896), Amelia Peláez (1896-1968), Antonia Eiriz (1929-1995), Zaida del Río (1954) or Belkis Ayón (1967-1999) found a place, but the works of these artists seemed like tiny sparks in a landscape where the male voice was so dominant.

Considering this context dominated by a largely patriarchal vision of historiography, the exhibition MachA, VaronA, MasculinA is intended as a platform for experimentation with the aim to explore the role of women artists in the history of the Cuban art in the collection of the MNBA. Five young Cuban artists (three women and two men), whose work is recognized both internationally and locally context, execute this critical exercise. We are as interested in the perspective of male artists on the women’s artistic practice as we are by a female perspective. With the use of classic and new mediums (performance, video, installation, participatory action, engraving, etc.), Naivy Pérez, Grethell Rasúa, Adislén Reyes, Levi Orta and Julio César Llopiz reinterpret (and reappropriate) iconic works, recurrent themes and pictorial references associated with the creative world of the woman artist.

Analays Alvarez Hernandez

Montreal, May 8, 2014