Speaker: Dayara Bernal Roque, Biennial de la Habana.
Comments by Professor Carrie Lambert-Beatty, VES/HAA. Reception to follow.
Dayara Bernal Roque (La Habana, 1986) is a curator of contemporary Cuban art. She received her B.A. in Art History from University of Havana, Cuba in 2009. Her work focuses on criticism and research of contemporary Cuban art with particular emphasis on emerging audiovisual production. She has worked at the Wifredo Lam Center of Contemporary Art in Havana, where she assisted with promotion of the Tenth and Eleventh Havana Biennials. During the last Havana Biennial, she was an assistant curator, member of the organizing committee, and artistic director for the opening concert. In 2010, she received the Curator Award "Domingo Ravenet" from the Theory and Criticism department of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba Visual Arts Association (UNEAC).
In this event, Dayara Bernal Roque will explore audiovisual art by young Cuban artists as a recently expanded field of artistic creation.
The artists immerse themselves in urban areas and emphasize social criticism through the lens of an anthropological study. The range of the artists’ strategies reveals the personal concerns and unanswered questions of a new generation that critically examines the social project that began in 1959. They do not only construct and reconstruct the facades of a collapsing city, but also point to certain global transformations that affect ideological developments of the future.
“Puzzle” is named after a game to refer to a set of diverse themes of Cuban society within the context of Latin America. The individual pieces complement one another as well as tackle issues of religion, survival, demagogy, violence, disillusionment, and failure.
The artists included in this discussion are: Javier Castro, Diana Fonseca, Luis Gárciga, Carlos Martiel, Duniesky Martin & Raychel Carrión, Grethell Rasúa, and Celia & Yunior. For more information, pleas see this PDF.
Reception to follow.