Sin Palabras by Juan Carlos Alom alludes to Afro-Cuban heritage by recreating the image of an African slave who arrived in Cuba in the 16th century.|Photos courtesy of Vancouver’s Museum of Anthropology
The Cuban Revolution marked a turning point in the nation’s history because of its efforts to improve the social inequalities within the country. Yet, the economic crisis that engulfed the island in the early 1990s exposed the continuing marginalization of the country’s Afro-Cuban minority and brought this issue to the forefront of national discourse.
In Without Masks: Contemporary Afro-Cuban Art, on display at the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) until Nov. 2, Vancouver audiences get the opportunity to observe how contemporary Cuban art reflects on social stereotypes and racial issues.
Acknowledging social inequality
Without Masks drew about 1,500 visitors during its May 2 opening weekend. The 85 works in the exhibit were created by a diverse mix of 31 artists, and feature a variety of media, such as painting, photography, collage, soft-sculpture and video art.
All of the works on display were collected by South Africans Chris and Marina von Christierson. They established a collaboration with the Havana-based Cuban poet and art critic Orlando Hernández to showcase the contemporary Afro-Cuban perspective, as well as African influence in Cuban art.
In 2010, Hernández curated the first exhibit of works collected by the von Christiersons, and it showed with great success at the Johannesburg Art Gallery. Some of the works from the South African exhibit are on display at the MOA, but additional pieces have been added to the mix, some created by emerging and others by internationally renowned artists.
“In recent years this issue [of Afro-Cuban marginalization] is very attractive for the intellectuals and the Cuban government. In the years before, people thought that racism didn’t exist in Cuba because, at the beginning of the revolution, the government said that we were an egalitarian society,” explains Hernández.
Collective Afro-Cuban consciousness
Remember by The Merger captures the complexity of inherited cultural memories, as well as the impact of western technology on Cuban culture.|Photos courtesy of Vancouver’s Museum of Anthropology
However, Hernández emphasizes that Cubans view Afro-Cuban culture and its religions – Palo Monte, Santería, Ifá and Abakuá – as part of their national heritage even if they do not have African roots.
“In Cuba, this separation between the Afro-Cuban and the white person is very difficult to establish. [Without Masks features] artists reflecting on the African heritage that we all received [collectively],” he says.
To that effect, though not of Afro-Cuban ancestry, Alain Pino and Mario Miguel González (Mayito) of The Merger, a Havana-based art collective, nevertheless feel a connection to this aspect of Cuban culture. Their bronze sculpture titled Remember references the notion of inherited Afro-Cuban cultural memory that exists in the religion, dances, music and food that African slaves brought to the island.
The piece depicts an Afro-Cuban face with computer flash drives sticking out of the head in lieu of hair, commenting on the intractable influence that Western culture exerts on Cuban identity.
“In the end, technology imposes itself even in developing countries,” said Pino during the Without Masks artist talk on May 6.
Embracing the political
One of the exhibit’s conceptual artists, José Angel Vincench Barrera, believes that the Afro-Cuban heritage is not a conscious area of focus within the Cuban art world.
“The new generation of artists is not preoccupied with tradition, and is interested in new technology and a more universal, international language. I belong to this new generation that has to compromise to find new ways to represent the tradition,” he says.
Barrera’s Rogación de Cabeza features 25 ritual white cloth caps that are used by the practitioners of Santería and Ifá during the ritual known as Koborí, which is designed to feed the personal deity that resides inside an individual’s head.
Barrera distributed these caps to a cross-section of the Cuban population residing both in Havana and Miami, asking them to write down their life’s problems and dreams on top of the hats.
The allusion to unity between Cubans residing in the country and those living in the United States is a controversial notion in Cuba, and a reflection of Barrera’s fascination with the political. The latter is also evident in his The Weight of Words piece, which features four words (all colloquial derogatory references to Afro-Cubans) that are laminated in gold leaf on top of black acrylic canvas.
“We have a lot of examples of discrimination in Cuba, not only with reference to black people, but also with regards to homosexuality and religion, and sometimes people don’t react because they feel they can’t change anything. This is one of my criticisms of our society,” says Barrera.
Though he has been unable to exhibit some of his work in Cuba, due to its strongly political content, Barrera says that with the opportunities that the internet brings, he is always able to show the work internationally.
“I don’t want to promote this drama of the Cuban censorship. I create my art pieces without any restriction in my mind. I love my country and I can’t imagine living anywhere else right now,”
he says.
For more information on the Without Masks: Contemporary Afro-Cuban Art exhibit, visit
