Integration and resistance in the global era

The self-proclaimed mother of the globalized biennial model, finding its incentive in post-colonial discourse and presenting itself as an alternative to the ‘homogenizing’ Western art industry, the Havana Biennial, since its inception in 1984, takes the role of being a meeting place for artists and curators from Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. In the last few editions however, it has also opened up dialogues with the artistic production of Australia, Europe, Japan and even the US.
The 10th Havana Biennial provides a packed program of exhibitions, performances, screenings, conferences and events which are woven together under the vaguely utopian heading “Integration and Resistance in the Global Era.” The main location is the Fortaleza de San Carlos de La Cabaña and the nearby Moro Castle, as well as at 15 other official Biennial venues, amongst which is the Centro Wifredo Lam, from where this ambitious project originates. Besides these there are dozens of collateral events.
The Havana Biennial is a group-curated enterprise, providing a multifaceted artistic panorama and the results are quite mixed. The works presented in the Arsenale-like Fortaleza (though much ‘boxier’ than its Venetian counterpart) are for the most part too politically correct and rarely reach beyond known concepts of art production. However, there are some exceptions, like the enticing social sculpture of Inti Hernández (Cuba) and the faux-primitive musings on Caribbean identity by Alex Burke (Martinique), but otherwise one strolls along, looking in vain for that artist who will rattle a few cages.
The collateral events offer more surprises, such as the traveling “Latitudes: Tierras del Mundo” exhibition, which docked at the Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales, comprising poetical/political video work by Mounir Allaoui from the Comoros Islands and an ‘activist’ sculpture by the Surinamese Marcel Pinas. Notable and moving were the two projects “Agua Benita” and “Buena Vista Interchange” at Galería Villa Manuela by Cuban artist René Francisco, who situates his social art practice in the poorest boroughs of Havana. In a back gallery of the same venue the violent and surreal domestic situations acted out and photographed by Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo were equally striking. As with Franciso and Delahante, the most challenging works at this Biennial were those that sought to question the very making of art in relation to the social and political conditions of life in Cuba. Often they were to be found in the nightly group presentations by young Cuban artists at Galería Habana, all former participants in Cátedra Arte de Conducta, a program of ‘studies in political art’ founded in 2003 by artist Tania Bruguera. The Museo Ernesto Gallardo, by the artist of the same name, subversively mimicked the fetishistic display of private belongings from Cuban leaders at the Museo de la Revolución. Adrian Metis, Núria Güell and Levi Orta staged performances and showed documentation of subtly critical interventions into everyday Cuban life. Carlos Martiel presented his personal and extreme reinventions of body art. These were the highlights of the Biennial.
The most memorable, however, was the performance staged by Bruguera herself at a crowded Centro Wifredo Lam. Here she simply created a Tribuna Libre, where everybody could speak their minds for the length of one minute. Two military clad extras placed a white dove on the shoulders of the speechmakers, who were clearly uncomfortable behind the microphone. The work referred to Fidel’s victory speech from 1959, when a white dove landed on his shoulder and was considered to be a sign from above. With a PA placed in the doorstep, attracting passers by, the piece established a historic moment of free speech in a country where censorship and repression are omnipresent. This said, and notwithstanding the denunciation of the piece by the government the very next day, the work unmistakably underlined the exceptional position in this country of the visual arts as a platform for social and political critique.

Martijn van Nieuwenhuyzen, uit: Flash Art International Edition No. 267, July-September 2009, p. 28.
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