Curr0903

CUBAN ART SPACE
Press Release
September 2, 2003

Contact: Sandra Levinson or Sahnet Pérez-Stubbs, 212 242 0559

SOLIDARITY!
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY IN CUBAN POSTER ART

September 9 - October 11, 2003

It used to be that for a gallery in New York City, September was the opening of the season, the first shot a gallery would have at making critics sit up and notice. But since September 11, 2001, September has become something else as well: a time of remembrance and a time of reflection about the world's wicked ways. And by no means was September 11, 2001, the first September 11. Our own first September 11 was 30 years ago, in 1973, when a U.S.-backed coup brought down the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile, and caused the death of the president too. Many people died in Chile and they died because the United States did not like Salvador Allende's government. The United States does not like Fidel Castro's government, either. So here at the Cuban Art Space, we're on a bit of a hot seat. We thought putting on a show about international solidarity might be just the right thing for September.

The first art works that were collected by the Center for Cuban Studies were posters. When the Center opened its doors in 1972, the first contributions to its library were books and posters that visitors had picked up on their travels to Cuba, a very forbidden isle at the time (and still mostly off-limits to those who live in the United States). Center personnel collected hundreds of posters on their travels to Cuba: some came as gifts from host institutions or friends, others came off walls in offices or were carefully removed from displays on the street. All were saved. They provided indelible proof of Cuba's artistic and political commitments. Today, the Center boasts an almost unimaginable collection of several thousand posters.

Most of the posters of the 1970s came from two institutions: ICAIC (the Cuban Film Institute) and OSPAAAL (the Organization of Solidarity with Africa, Asia and Latin America). Past exhibits of the Cuban Art Space have honored the works of individual graphic designers such as Bachs (Eduardo Muñoz Bachs), who worked with ICAIC and was its most important artist, and Alfredo Rostgaard, who designed for OSPAAAL, ICAIC, and many other cultural and political institutions.

This exhibit of solidarity posters consists of approximately 150 posters, all from the Center's collection of art works. Most of them are from OSPAAAL, an organization founded in 1966 which still exists and continues to publish the magazine Tricontinental. In the 1970s, the posters were folded and placed inside the magazine, so when you bought a copy of the magazine, you got a poster for your wall too (which explains the creases in many of the posters). Other posters come from OCLAE, the Organization of Latin American Students, as well as ICAIC. Some are from the propaganda departments of the Communist Party, others from organizations formed specifically to address certain issues, such as the Organization of Solidarity with Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, others are from short-lived committees, such as that formed to promote the World Youth Festival in Havana.

The artists include the best in Cuba : first among equals, René Mederos and Rostgaard, followed by Berta Abelenda, Lázaro Abreu, Bachs, Luis Balaguer, Ñiko (Antonio Pérez), Alberto Blanco, Rafael Enriquez, Olivio Martinez, Rafael Morante, Ernesto Padrón, Asela Pérez, Faustino Pérez, and many others.

For political activists, this exhibit is a walk through a wretched history: the war in Vietnam, the war in Angola, apartheid in South Africa, the U.S. invasion of Santo Domingo, Chile, Nicaragua, Guinea-Bissau, and Puerto Rico (always treated by Cuba as a separate independent entity). There are heros: Ho Chi Minh, Lumumba, Amilcar Cabral, Salvador Allende, George Jackson. There are the anti-heros: Richard Nixon appears in menacing forms--as the American eagle ready to pounce on Vietnam, for example, and as a man whose head is filled--literally--with the dead bodies of war.

Our hope is that visitors will see not only the graphic designs, which range from glorious to difficult to look at, but will learn what lies behind the art and learn what "solidarity" means to beleaguered countries like Cuba.

• • • • •

"Solidarity is not charity, but mutual aid in pursuit of shared objectives."
--Samora Machel, first president of Mozambique

Ever since Fidel Castro's troops successfully defeated the Batista regime in 1959, Cuba has actively supported movements for fundamental political change throughout the world. This includes support of struggles for national liberation--the process that many countries endured to emerge from colonial control during the 1960s and 1970s--and of revolutionary organizations within certain countries that have resorted to armed struggle to overthrow unpopular regimes. Most of these countries constitute what is known as the "third world." They have suffered underdevelopment as a consequence of modern colonial status or have experienced dramatic social inequality as a result of corrupt foreign-supported governments, and they are generally located in the continents of Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Solidarity is a political term that can mean many things. It can range from formal support, with military troops and materiel (such as Cuba sent to guerrillas in the Congo), to more benign activities such as sending food or skilled personnel to other countries. It also means public support of these countries and their issues, with United Nations speeches and posters distributed worldwide. Some of these posters take on abstract political issues, such as foreign debt, liberation theology, armed struggle, the influence of the International Monetary Fund and even capitalism itself. However, most solidarity posters focus on specific events and issues.

The primary enemy of subjects in colonial countries was usually the military and police forces fo the occupying Europeans. However, national liberation struggles also served as a theater for the grander geopolitical battle being waged between the United States and its archenemies, the Soviet Union and China. Thus, by engaging in support for the oppositional forces, Cuba became a significant participant in the larger struggle between capitalism and socialism. In many cases, public U.S. foreign policy only hinted at the actual role the United States played in supporting the colonial powers, and the implementation of more clandestine foreign policy goals fell to the Central Intelligence Agency, special operations units of the armed forces, and surrogate mercenaries. Many of the affected countries are ones that most Americans are only vaguely aware of--the Congo, Zimbabwe, Guinea-Bissau--but others such as Vietnam and South Africa are better known.

Cuba deeply identified with Vietnam, a small, poor country attempting to overthrow a series of corrupt leaders serving the interests of a chain of foreign masters. Cuba was one of the earliest and most persistent supporters of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress at the same time that the United States government avoided taking a stand. In some cases, Cuban solidarity has included geopolitical entities that were not even countries. Puerto Rico is seen as a colonial vestige of more than a hundred years of U.S. occupation, and Palestine is respected as a nation without a state.

Cuban solidarity posters have honored martyrs (Sandino in Nicaragua), chastised U.S. intervention (the Dominican Republic), endorsed domestic opposition within the United States (as carried out by the Black Panther Party), or noted the struggle of whole countries (Guatemala), populations (the Arab people), and generic exploited classes (peasants in Peru). Many posters have supported the struggle of Cuban allies that U.S. foreign policy has simply labeled unacceptable. The democratically elected governments of these countries were seen as a threat to U.S. business and political interests, and overt military invasions (Grenada) or covert (Chile) resulted in their replacement by more acceptable leadership.

Excerpted from "Solidarity and Revolution," in Revolución: Cuban Poster Art, by Lincoln Cushing, Chronicle Books, San Francisco, 2003