Ybor City gallery opens a window on growing freedoms in Cuba

Ybor City gallery opens a window on growing freedoms in Cuba
By Paul Guzzo | Tribune Staff
Published: November 9, 2014

TAMPA — Modern depictions of life in Cuba by artists who live there are
the only works that hang from the walls of Ybor City's Habana Art Gallery.

Landscapes luxuriate with trees and sparkling water, classic cars
cruising the city and abstracts pop like a Jackson Pollock.

What these images represent, say gallery owners Manuel Fernandez and
Mike Mauricio, they could not say.

"I don't know anything about art except what I like to look at,"
Fernandez said with a laugh. "And I like these."

Taken together, the works represent a greater freedom of expression
afforded today to people in all walks of life in Cuba. No longer does
art require approval from the Communist government.

It is in many ways a dramatic turnaround from the days of Cuba's close
alliance with the Soviet Union and when former Marxist dictator Fidel
Castro famously declared: "Within the Revolution, everything; Against
it, nothing."

Still, the turnaround is a work in progress.

Few of those working in the arts in Cuba, or their patrons in the United
States, will talk about anything but the progress.

But with government controlling all the publishing companies, broadcast
networks, major art festivals, museums and galleries, few who work in
the arts are finding success if they veer too far from the official
line, in the view of some of those who have.

"My family thought I had been killed," said Cuban writer and artist
Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, recalling the three days he spent in jail in
March 2012 during the visit of Pope Benedict XVI. "Then I was released
without charges."

A year later, Pardo Lazo came to the United States.

"As all the censored leave Cuba or stop being critical," he said,
"ending censorship seems not an urgent issue. But we do need to express
ourselves freely in our own country."

❖ ❖ ❖

For more than half a century, new Cuban art tracked closely with the
government line. The nation had a reputation for quashing freedom of
expression among its artists.

Today, though, once-taboo subjects such as religion, homosexuality, even
failed government policies find their way into artistic expression there.

Cuban artwork now represents modern Cuban life more authentically than
at any time since the communist revolution.

Some observers attribute this to a deliberate softening of government
policy. They note, for example, that works of art confiscated in the
1980s as critical of the government now hang in galleries and museums —
as a reflection of those darker times.

"I have people come back from Cuba who are shocked to see some pieces
that are very critical of the government displayed openly at galleries,"
said Michelle Wojcik, who operates New York City's La Galería Cubana,
importing and selling artwork by those living on the island. "I tell
them that times are changing and that is a good thing."

Others say the change is more a reflection of worsening economic
conditions in Cuba — that the government was forced to allow artists
access to international art buyers so more money would flow into the
country.

"The cultural field in Cuba has been monopolized by the government for
over 50 years," said Ted Henken, an associate professor at Baruch
College in New York who specializes in contemporary Cuban culture.
"Providing artists with independence from the government can provide
more freedom of expression."

Tampa gallery owners Fernandez, 62, and Mauricio, 67, are grandchildren
of people who were in the wave of Cuban immigrants that helped shape
Ybor City. The men say they do their part to provide for Cuban artists.

Besides the gallery, they bring musicians from Cuba. The band Sol y Son
is scheduled to perform at the Ritz Ybor today.

And they lead tour groups to Cuba from Tampa focused on the arts.

"We want to provide Tampa with that authentic Cuban experience that we
enjoyed as kids growing up here when the smells, sounds and sights of
Cuba were everywhere in Ybor City," Fernandez said.

Among their Cuban tour stops are national arts schools; Cojimar, the
fishing village that inspired Ernest Hemingway's novel "The Old Man and
the Sea;" the Tropicana Cabaret; and art galleries.

At each destination, travelers can meet the artists and purchase their
work. When specific artists prove popular among the tour groups, their
work may find its way to the Ybor City gallery.

The men insist that politics has no place in their visits.

Mauricio has been to Cuba more than 50 times, primarily representing his
agricultural products company, Florida Produce, and has never once
talked politics there, he said.

"I have no desire to."

❖ ❖ ❖

In the view of professor Henken, anyone who helps Cuban artists make a
living is part of the push for positive change.

Throughout much of Cuba's history as a communist nation, the government
exerted control over artists as the sole source of their supplies,
studio space, galleries, publishing, recording studios and international
opportunities.

Government provided them jobs, too, such as designing tobacco labels.

"Between the late '60s and early '80s Cuba saw a dark period," Henken
said. "Strict parameters were established that ostracized, exiled or
even imprisoned certain critical artists and censored or banned their
work outright."

Then the Soviet Union fell, the Cuban economy went into a tailspin, and
the government had to pull back its support for the arts, said Mabel
Cuesta, a Cuban-born writer who teaches U.S. Latino and Caribbean
literature at the University of Houston.

"A lack of everything had an impact on those subventions," Cuesta said.
"Therefore, the artists from the island had no other choice than
becoming independent."

Helping open the door to the U.S. market was a court challenge that came
four decades after the U.S. imposed the travel and trade embargo on
Cuba. Sandra Levinson, executive director of the New York-based Center
for Cuban Studies, won that lawsuit against the U.S. Treasury Department
in 1991.

"Everything in Cuba has changed so radically in recent years," Levinson
said in an interview. "Especially in the arts."

The government now supports creative independence, she said, allowing
artists to operate their own galleries and making it easier for them to
travel abroad for art shows.

❖ ❖ ❖

Still, Henken said, even as the Cuban government assures artists of
their freedoms, it looks for ways to tighten control over certain messages.

Pardo Lazo, the author and artist, is one example.

In 2009, his book "Boring Home" was scheduled to be published in Cuba
despite its criticism of Marxism's utopian dream. Pardo Lazo also
authored a blog called "Lunes de Post-Revolución" ("Post-Revolution
Mondays" in English) that condemned government practices.

His hope of free expression in Cuba grew.

Then as the publication date neared, he reached out to his editor for an
update. He was told that he never had a deal.

"I had worked with the editor for a while and was told previously it was
already on the press," Pardo Lazo said. "And then they make me look like
a crazy man who was living in a fantasy world."

Pardo Lazo, now in the U.S., is editor of "Voces," a magazine critical
of the Cuban government, distributed in Cuba via CDs, flash drives, the
domestic network known in Cuba as the "intranet," and photocopied paper
editions.

Despite his experience with censorship, he promotes the idea that
Americans should visit the island and support its artists.

Only by gaining full independence from the government, he said, can
artists break the bonds of censorship.

Another example of censorship, Henken said, is Pedro Pablo Oliva, one of
Cuba's most beloved artists.

Oliva's new art show, titled "Utopias and Dissidences," was scheduled to
open at the Pinar del Rio Art Museum but was canceled by the government.

The reason provided Oliva: The city did not have "subjective favorable
conditions," according to Yoani Sánchez, co-founder of "14ymedio," a
digital daily newspaper published in Cuba that is critical of the
government. Sánchez called that a "contrived way of rejecting the
uncomfortable images" in Oliva's paintings, which depict failures in the
Marxist utopia.

Instead, the Oliva show was scheduled to open this month at the private
workshop he is allowed to operate under new Cuban laws.

In years past, his exhibit might never have been seen.

pguzzo@tampatrib.com

Source: Ybor City gallery opens a window on growing freedoms in Cuba |
TBO.com, The Tampa Tribune and The Tampa Times -
http://tbo.com/arts_music/ybor-city-gallery-opens-a-window-on-growing-freedoms-in-cuba-20141109/