The commitment to an even-handed neutrality toward ethnicity often promised by Communist states has been difficult for many to believe, including the twenty Afro-Cuban artists who exhibited as the Grupo Antillano from 1978 to the mid-eighties. Though diverse in media and styles, they all affirm the island’s Afro-Cuban roots. Rejected by younger artists and cultural authorities, their cause never dominated Cuban art. Over several years, Alejandro de la Fuente, a Harvard historian of comparative slavery and race relations, has located work by original participants, as well as younger artists with similar concerns.
Afro-Caribbean spirituality is one theme: though some artists are devoted to Santeria and one is an Orunmila priest, there is no indication that any work was intended to serve a religious function. Rafael Queneditt Morales, the founder of the group, created a new sculptural installation, “Resurrection,” for this show. A life-sized Baroque angel, with wings colored like the Cuban flag, it stands in front of a ponderous wooden cross. Its iconographic details propose a multi-ethnic, multi-religious nationality. Rather than offering a spiritual experience, it appears like a political cartoon. Likewise, most other pieces reference, rather than express, spirituality. The sexy, bizarre and beautifully carved “Satélite” by Rogelio Rodríguez Cobas comes closest to being a venerable artifact.
Rafael Queneditt Morales, “Resurrection”
The show is more seriously concerned with the grim legacy of slavery, which has lent the exhibition its name, “Drapetomania,” the frenzy to escape, as diagnosed by a racist Louisiana physician in 1851. As presented by the artists, slavery destroyed community, culture, personal identity and even life itself. Joining the American tradition of abstract expression, Alberto Lescay effectively responds with despair and anger. Mastering the European tradition of figure drawing, José Bedia dramatically depicts the degradation of sexual abuse. In an installation of life-size stuffed leather dolls, Elio Rodríguez Valdés presents a tableaux of torture as beautiful as it is horrifying.
Only a few pieces move beyond the didactic and only six of twenty-seven artists are women, but the diversity of this collection of post-Revolution Afro-Cuban art is fascinating. (Chris Miller)
Through October 16 at the DuSable Museum of African American History, 740 East 56th
Beyond the Void: Nate Young on Recreating History and Making Art Anew On view is a new series of drawings, in which Young attempts to recreate a photograph from memory of his great grandfather standing with a horse, a continuation of a larger project, in which Young is learning how to ride a horse so he can recreate his great grandfather's migration by horse, from North Carolina to Pennsylvania.
All You Need Is Love: A Review of "LOVE: Still Not the Lesser" at MoCP Museum of Contemporary Photography shows a collection of work from a dozen international artists on the subject of love and in all its many manifestations and forms: Straight love, queer love, family love, love of others and love of the self.
Living History and Time Unbound: A Review of "Counterpublic" With over twenty-five participating artists and art collectives, the second iteration of St. Louis’ "Counterpublic" is an ambitious, multi-site exhibition series that takes place in public spaces, community gathering spots, and cultural and historical institutions.
The Friction of History: A Review of Sky Hopinka at the Block Museum Merging metaphor and direct accounts of Fort Marion, Hopinka’s “Cloudless Blue Egress of Summer” offers perspectives on the long and complex reality of American colonialism told through this site of annihilation.
