CORAL GABLES | CUBAN ART
U.S. cultural exchange opens door to mother-and-son Cuban painters
Two painters are the latest Cuban artists from the island to exhibit
their work in South Florida under the Obama administration's cultural
exchange policy.
BY FABIOLA SANTIAGO
fsantiago@MiamiHerald.com
CONCILIATORY ART: `Art opens doors and roads,' Cuban painter Flora Fong
says. `It's a conciliatory element, it reaches the soul.' She's
exhibiting her work along with her son Li Domínguez Fong, also a
painter, at the Coral Gables' Cernuda Arte gallery.
Mother-and-son Cuban artists Flora Fong and Li Domínguez Fong have
traveled to South Florida from their home in Havana for a joint
exhibition of their works, The Mother, The Son: Two Artists, One
Passion, at Coral Gables' Cernuda Arte.
On this Saturday, a day after their show's well-attended opening
reception during the city's monthly Gallery Walk, the duo is guiding
visitors through paintings that evoke Cuban cultural identity in
strikingly different styles.
Fong's paintings and sculpture are charged with the tropical vigor of
the Cuban countryside and framed by symbols of her Chinese ancestry.
Domínguez's angst-laden works are enigmatic landscapes in textured
grays, black and white. Broken or incomplete bridges and stairwells --
and people -- populate his art.
Mother and son have traveled extensively with their art -- including to
China where they tracked down relatives and ancestors -- but they're
particularly touched by exhibiting together in a city populated by so
many Cubans and Cuban Americans that sometimes it seems an outpost of
Havana.
``Art opens doors and roads,'' Fong, 60 says. ``It's a conciliatory
element, it reaches the soul.''
``All of my neighborhood is here, my people, my generation, it's all
here,'' says Domínguez, 32.
The Fongs are the latest Cuban artists from the island to benefit from
the Obama Administration's relaxation of travel policy between Cuba and
the United States. Under the Bush administration, which clamped down on
the issuing of visas for Cuban artists and performers to visit,
exhibitions of Cuban art often went without the presence of the artist
and musicians and actors stopped coming to perform.
But as it was during the Clinton Administration, Cuban artists,
musicians, actors and filmmakers are once again traveling to South
Florida and participating in cultural life.
U.S. VISAS
According to the State Department, 260 visas were issued to Cuban
artists and performers from January through the end of July. By
comparison in 2009, only 150 were issued all year.
``We have taken the political filter away from any visa consideration,''
said State Department spokeswoman Virginia Staab. ``If Cuban artists
qualify and meet requirements, then the visa would then be granted.''
Requirements are complicated. As part of the visa application process,
for example, artists must certify they have no intention of staying in
United States by proving they have assets in Cuba, family ties and other
reasons to return.
La Orquesta Aragón, Cuba's best-known orchestra for four generations,
performed at Dade County Auditorium last month. The Havana theater
groups El Público and Buendía staged productions in Miami in July, the
latter at the Manuel Artime Theater in Little Havana (a theater named
after an exiled anti-Castro militant). Next, the hip-hop duo Los
Aldeanos and urban singer Silvito el Libre (son of controversial
troubadour Silvio Rodríguez, who recently gave a concert in Orlando) are
scheduled to perform for the first time in South Florida in November.
``Increasing Cuban participation in cultural exchanges is consistent
with the administration's objective to promote the free flow of
information to, from, and within Cuba,'' Staab said.
NO PROBLEMS
At Cernuda Arte, two other artists represented by the gallery -- Vicente
Hernández and Ramón Vázquez -- obtained visas from the Obama
administration to attend their openings in Miami, said owner Ramón Cernuda.
``All the visas we have requested have been approved without problems or
delays,'' Cernuda said.
It's the second time that Fong, a professor of art in Havana's
prestigious San Alejandro Academy from 1970 to 1989, comes to an
exhibition of her work in Miami. She was here in 2001. But in 2006, the
visa was denied, Cernuda said. It's her son's first exhibition here.
``Flora is one of the important artists of her generation, a mature
generation that stayed in Cuba through this gray epoch,'' Cernuda said.
``In the United States she's not as well-known, but she is well-regarded
in Europe and in Asia.''
Sunflowers, palm trees, red fish, a cafecito cup, the smoke of a cigar
and the sea are primary elements in the paintings she creates in her
studio at the home she shares with Domínguez in the upscale district of
Havana's Miramar. (She is divorced from Domínguez's father, also an
artist, as is an older daughter, Liang).
To draw her palm trees, most of them whipped by stormy winds, Fong
starts with the lines of the Chinese character for forest. A painting of
a tropical island-like mountain is anchored by the Chinese character for
mountain.
INSPIRED BY NATURE
The sea is everywhere.
``I like to contemplate the sea,'' she says. ``But I don't like the
drama that can also be evoked by the sea. I like to paint the positive
side of life. I'm inspired by nature.''
On the other hand, Domínguez, who is exhibiting work created during the
last eight years, has a more critical view of life. His peasants and
fishermen seem sad, pensive, and as in the striking A la espera (In The
Waiting), disillusioned. The stairwell doesn't seem to lead anywhere.
The bridge becomes something else, something elusive.
``La doble moral (the double standards),'' he offers as one possible
interpretation of some of the themes he depicts.
Every painting has a phantasmagoric quality. Like his mother, he evokes
his Chinese ancestry but he does it with characters, not always
distinguishable by gender, who have Asian features.
``Sometimes I don't even know what I'm painting,'' he says. ``My mother
says I am always painting myself.''
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/09/05/v-fullstory/1809167/us-cultural-exchange-opens-door.html
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