Arte 2005 was originally planned as a festival of Cuban and Cuban-American arts, but recent U.S. government restrictions on travel to Cuba hindered what had been an opening of artistic boundaries between the countries. As a result, the festival's currents broadened to include the Americas – including other islands of the Caribbean, Central and South America. Although the official opening event is slated for April 7 at the University of South Florida College of Visual Arts, many events and exhibitions have already begun.
Two Pinellas venues have fine exhibitions on view now: Out of Cuba: Sosabravo and Flora Fong, at the Gulf Coast Museum of Art in Largo; and Deep Blue: Caribbean-American Statements, at the Florida Craftsmen Gallery in St. Petersburg. Both shows evidence shared artistic roots among the islands: connections to the earth, the sea, agrarian and communal life. Colonialism and the history of slavery, nostalgia, and exile are other common themes. These shows celebrate and meditate upon the natural and spiritual life of African-Caribbean-American art.
After visiting the studios of Cuban artists in 2003, Ken Rollins, director of the Gulf Coast Museum of Art, chose the work of Alfredo Sosabravo and Flora Fong for his current exhibition. While sharing imagery of nature and the brilliant colors of tropical life, the work of these two artists shows extremes of style and sensibility.
Sosabravo's works are riotous canvases of stylized figures, abstract shapes and lettering. Flatly painted images of animals, humans and everyday objects are deconstructed, then reimagined in electric primary colors and thick outlines. His work samples surrealism, cubism, expressionism, pop and graffiti art, while maintaining the freshness and decoration of folk art. Much like the magic realism of Latin American writing, each piece tells a mythic tale with bizarrely imagined twists.
Many of Sosabravo's narratives of the fantastic are biblical stories retold with island imagery. "The Destruction of the Tower of Babel" shows an island bamboo forest on blue sea, under siege from the tools or tourism and industry. Other works pay tribute to European modernists, while reminding us that the roots of Western modernism can be found in Afro-Cuban imagery. "Personage with Fish" is a totem to Paul Klee and the cubists, while "Homage to Hundertwasser" honors the Austrian expressionist painter. The paintings have a folkloric carnival atmosphere that predates and outlasts the modernists.
Flora Fong paints in a manner as fluid as the Caribbean waters. Cliché symbols of tropical tourism – palm trees, bananas, tropical fish and birds – regain their soulful essence in her exquisitely contoured and brilliantly reduced compositions. Fong, whose ancestry is Chinese and Cuban, studied Chinese painting and calligraphy. Her sensitive brush defines her subjects and their movement in the first stroke, synthesizing calligraphy and expressionism.
Fong's "Portrait of a Cyclone" stops the fury of a tropical storm in its terrifying tracks. You can hear the wind and smell the electricity as her palm trees and telephone poles bend to near breaking point. The work is a succinct, abstract and perfectly visceral embodiment of the power and energy of a hurricane.
While the Gulf Coast exhibition brings us the work of contemporary Cuban masters, the exhibition Deep Blue: Caribbean-American Statements at the Florida Craftsmen Gallery offers a sampling of emerging Caribbean artists. Guest curator Juan "Ermán" Gonzalez (known as Ermán) set an ambitious agenda of destroying stereotypical perceptions of Caribbean tourist art; representing young artists working in new media; and erasing the line between art and craft. I'll highlight a few of the 16 participating artists to indicate the great variety of media and work here, but the other works are equally worth the visit.
Juana Valdes' installation "The Journey Within" is visible from the street. A flotilla of white porcelain boats, shaped like simple folded paper hats, is placed on a blue painted platform inside the gallery window. The boats are pretty, but the sharp pyramids protruding upwards prevent the boats from holding any passengers. This installation makes a simply formal statement about the perilous physical and psychic journey Caribbean exiles must risk.
Guillermo Gonzalez, trained as a jeweler, creates exquisite objects out of reclaimed and recycled materials. A cedar box is inlaid with recycled piano key ivory and sterling silver. The remaining ebony piano keys are used in another piece, a letter opener of cow bone. His pieces are unexpected jewels fashioned from cast-off materials. His work reminds us of the tradition of artisanship that is more ancient than the western tradition of "fine arts."
Ermán's own work is displayed in a separate installation. While working in the garment industry in Miami, he learned skills of fiber art. Using fabric, ceramics and wood, he weaves stories of his real and fantasy childhood, with a palpable nostalgia for the Cuba of his childhood. Each of Ermán's sewn, quilted and sculpted garments symbolize a member of his family and the longings of exile.
"El Plato Nacional" is a transparent tulle robe, attached like many of his fiber pieces with clothespins to clothesline. A grid is sewn across the entire piece, creating pockets, which are filled with rice, black beans and laurel leaves – the ingredients of the national dish of Cuba. The piece refers to the memories of his mother and the rationed meals that sustained her children during the years of his father's political imprisonment. This and other works, which resist the designer's temptation of decorative embellishment, have an eloquence and honesty that transcend craft to become art.
These two exhibitions are strong representations of the old guard and cutting edge of current art of the Americas. I hope the other exhibitions of Arte 2005 offer equally rich and thoughtful work.
This article appears in Apr 6-12, 2005.
