Several
of the curators that took part in the event, beginning with Margarita
Sánchez Prieto, our guest editor, contributed to this double
issue of Heterogénesis dedicated to the Ninth Havana Biennial.
The material selected by her includes texts by Nelson Herrera Ysla
and Jose Manuel Noceda written prior to the biennial. They analyse
the city as a physical and cultural space. On the organisation and
developing process of the biennial we publish four texts covering
different aspects of this process. Dannys Montes de Oca Moreda writes
about the theoretical segment developed at the Idea Forum that focused
in historical, sociological, critical, ideological and production
mechanisms in urban spaces. Ibis Hernandez goes through the methodology
adopted in this Biennial and the perspective from which the Cuban
curators worked. Andrés D. Abreu interviews Rubén
del Valle Lantarón, director of the Centre of Contemporary
Art Wifredo Lam and of the Biennial of Havana, who reflects on the
role of the Biennial in the international exhibitions circuit and
its future perspectives. Margarita Sánchez Prieto makes a
critical review of the intentions and results of the show through
the exhibited works.
We
thank the Centre of Contemporary Art Wifredo Lam and its director
Rubén del Valle Lantarón, and specially Margarita
Sánchez Prieto for their support to this publication and
for allowing us to present the Biennial from the point of view of
its own organizers.
Brief
reflections on the biennial
This Biennial is the third edition that I have had the privilege
to attend. In the first two (3rd, 1989 and 5th, 1995) I was a participant
in the frenzy of the openings, the theory seminars and the presence
of the artists. This time I arrived in Havana towards the end of
the Biennial and could visit the different places where the works
were exhibited with the invaluable guide of Margarita Sánchez
Prieto, one of the curators of the Biennial. I also had the opportunity
to meet Ibis Hernandez, another curator of the team. During the
tour of La Cabaña and other spaces in downtown Havana, both
curators expressed their insatisfaction with certain aspects of
this Biennial, which is reflected in their texts. Personally, I
agree with some of the criticisms but not all of them. I also value
the enormous effort made by the Wilfredo Lam Centre to organize
the Biennial and give a place to artists who normally do not appear
in the international artistic circuits, in addition to the courage
of proposing an artistic project from the perspective of the South.
From
the beginning the Havana Biennial was oriented to promote and stimulate
the art of countries from the so-called Third World. It was an attempt
to counterbalance the overwhelming presence of artists of the First
World in the international art shows, where the artists of the South
were very poorly represented. The first two biennials were a sort
of test (1984 and 1986) without a specific subject and with a kind
of open invitation. Although in the third (1989) the participation
of the artists was more structured, a theme was proposed, and theory
seminars and workshops were held as complementary activities to
the exhibitions. This work structure continued being developed in
the coming events.
The curatorial concept
Curatorial work is an important part of the operating structure
of an exhibition. It defines the concepts and the form in which
the participation of the guest artists, the seminaries and other
parallel events will be developed. The curatorial models that have
been tested in other biennials and international events are curatorial
groups in charge of a director, and country representation. In the
first model artists who work on the proposed subjects are selected,
whereas in the second each country makes the selection of the artists.
The biennials of Venice as well as Sao Paulo, pioneers in this kind
of exhibitions, mix both models, although for the next Sao Paulo
Biennial the selection of artists will be under the exclusive responsibility
of the curators, which end with the selection by country. The election
of a theme limits the selection of the artists to two possible ways:
inviting artists to produce and present work on the subject proposed
for the exhibition, and the invitation of artists who already are
working on the subject to show already produced and exhibited works.
The
Havana Biennial works with a curatorial group that has specialized
in the geographic areas that conform the so-called Third World:
Latin America, Africa Asia and the Middle East. Of practical reasons
the Latin American participation has being the most important. Although
the show is centred on these three continents, artists from United
States, Europe and other parts of the world have usually been invited
which in my point of view gives the exhibition a more global character.
The curators visit their workplaces to see the art that is being
produced on their respective fields and to select the artists who
will participate on the biennial. Nevertheless, this time, as Ibis
Hernandez points out, the field research were very limited in Africa
and none in Asia. The model of selecting pieces has the advantage
that the artworks have already been produced, but has the big disadvantage
of transportation, for which there is not always enough resources,
which is what happened with several works selected for this biennial.
The result was that, instead of showing the selected works, they
were replaced by video projections or small-scale pieces, normally
bi-dimensional. This dominance of two-dimensionality is one of the
deficiencies that Margarita Sánchez Prieto points out in
her article.
The spaces
Certainly, the proposed subject was appropriate for interventions
in the urban space, street performances and large installations
in different places of the city. Havana City is the biggest art
gallery in the world, as Nelson Herrera Ysla writes, and he is right.
The city has many urban areas of interest: the historical centre,
the Vedado area, the New Vedado, Miramar and many other places with
a history of their own and to which the artist can interact. With
some few exceptions (Fa+ and Mariano Molina, among them) the open
spaces were not used. Fa+ brought intervened street objects, wrapping
them with gold leaf, and Mariano Molina made a mural consisting
of shades that blended with the shade of the branches of a tree.
The
Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña, built in 1763 as Spain’s
biggest military enclave in America, lodges a museum and the other
buildings are holed the Book Fair and Tourism Fair, among others
events. The main part of the biennial was exhibited in this area.
The area occupied by the biennial consisted on pavilions with small
rooms on one side and bigger ones on the other crossed by a second
corridor. Here the works had the necessary space to be perceived,
an important factor in the exhibition of works of art.
Dynamics of the urban culture
The
theme of the Biennial allowed a wide range of interpretations, even
more considering that three culturally distant continents were involved
in the project. In the first place, the spatial solutions of the
city, the functional and decorative objects, the use of the public
space, the private spaces, the way of solving the problems they
present and their use, the means of transportation, etc. Each aspect
of the city was expressed in itself and in opposition to the rural
world: culture versus nature, incorporation of elements of nature
in the urban area, influences of other cultures. In short, the possibilities
are infinite. Some of these aspects were portrayed in the Biennial.
The
dichotomy countryside-city was expressed in the windmills made with
the tops of three of those brandishes found at the entrance of subways
of Edgar Hechevarría (Cuba). The bars were in the front of
the space, and the mills, projected onto the bottom wall, gave the
impression of being the shade of those tops, preventing the access
to the room. Also along that dichotomy was the work of Javier Camarasa
(Spain) showing through a video projection how a computer game image
is quickly eating up the natural landscape, turning it into residential
and tourist spaces. The signboards of different kinds we see around
us in contemporary large cities were present in several works: C.
Jankowski’s AGUA WASSER project (Mexico-Germany), which should
have been displayed in full size but were shown as scale models
I very little dimensions and Chinatown of Rosalía Maguid
(Argentina), with peculiar signboards of Chinese immigrants in Buenos
Aires. On migration between cities in the same country, was the
work of Sue Williamson (South Africa) in which various persons talked
about their migrant experiences.
The
seven special invited artists presented different aspects of that
urban dynamics: Antoni Miralda (Spain) with his work inprogress
Tastes and Tongues: La Habana, for which he invited the public to
create an image with a plate. Carlos Saura (Spain modifies pictures
of groups of people in street cars or waiting rooms with wax pens.
Anne and Patrick Poirier (France) construct a futuristic city with
sugar. Shilpa Gupta (India) intervenes the bridge at the entrance
of La Cabaña with yellow plastic ribbons. Jean Nouvel (France)
covered the walls of the Centro Hispanoamericano de Cultura with
pictures of their projects for several cities. Spencer Tunick (USA)
showed a series of photographies of naked bodies as part of the
urban landscape taken in different cities, images that have become
their personal trademark. A dimension of the urban culture that
could be seen as different from the West culture showed Shirin Neshat
(Iran/USA) in her video Zarin. Although the work was about woman’s
dilemmas in the Muslim culture, at the end the history of a prostitute
who was tired and sick of his situation run away to the outside
world without been able to be part of it is not that different from
what women in other parts of the world. What makes the story different
is the presence of women in black mantles, a view people living
the West culture are not use to see.
Conclusion
The balance of an exhibition as wide as the Biennial is always positive,
for the organizers as well as for the artists, who gain in experience,
and the public, who has the opportunity of seeing works of artists
of different countries. After each edition a critical evaluation
is necessary to overcome weaknesses and to introduce new aspects
in the future. Certainly, the lack of resources limits the projects
to a high extent, and imagination is sometimes exhausted, but the
display of strength that the Biennial has shown until today allows
us to think that the dissatisfaction observed in the texts published
here will be overcome and that new ways of development for this
project will be found.
