By Logan Monteleone
Business and Distribution Manager
Framed only by small sheets of gray paper against Kohl Gallery’s plain walls, the drawings in the newest exhibition of Cuban political art provide a complex contrast to their simple setting in their varied displays of colors and grayscales, past and present, and oppression and power.
Maria de Lourdes Mariño Fernandez, the curator of “Drafting Dissent: Drawings from Cuba’s Recent Activist Scene,” is a former professor at the Higher Institute of Art in Havana and an art history PhD candidate at Temple University. Her exhibition opened in Kohl on Feb. 6 and will be on display until March 8.
Through her research project, Mariño is endeavoring “to provide a map of a new generation of Cuban artists,” including those who are currently in the country and others who have left but continue to influence the art and activism scenes in Cuba, she said.
“You really see these three different ways in which artists have taken the political climate and made it their own, and done so in a way that’s completely energized and visually grabbing,” Director of the Kohl Gallery Rob Blackson said.
The work on display includes a series of drawings by Cuban artists and social activists Raychel Carrión, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, and Camila Ramírez Lobón.
Freshman Emily Polio, who works as a docent in the Kohl Gallery, said that Carrión’s work stood out to her for its reckoning with reality.
“When you see the side by side of the photo with [his] interpretation of the work, it’s…really incredible to see the difference between them, and also like the way that they…extrapolate all of these ideas from just an image,” Polio said.
Blackson admired that Carrión’s graphite drawings are “so well rendered and so explicit in their imagery.” The violence in its depiction of exposed and removed jaws symbolically demonstrates “the evisceration of the possibility for speech and for speaking” in a way that is “so beautifully, but also grotesquely rendered.”
A performance artist who is currently detained in as a political prisoner, Alcántara’s depictions of a clown-like figure that reflects his own confinement relate to his “unwavering fight for the freedom of cultural expression in Cuba.”
Blackson pointed out that the perforation is still present on the pages that feature Alcántara’s drawings, adding a level of reality and urgency to the fact that they were drawn from prison.
As a columnist for an independent Cuban magazine, Lobón’s work “focuses on the narration and illustration of a social and political imaginary that subverts the Cuban totalitarian narrative through individual memory.”
Blackson commented on the power of seeing depictions of figures like the Cuban poet José Julián Martí Pérez, as well as the re-appropriation of symbols of oppression like the Cuban seal.
Mariño seeks to emphasize in her work that political activism in Cuba is “not happening in a vacuum,” and that the present can be traced back through history “to offer a little bit of that complexity and trauma…that is part of our history.”
In describing the challenges that come with curating an exhibit, Mariño said she is motivated not just by her role as an art historian, but by her connection to the artists, many of whom are her friends.
“I really wish that people who enter the gallery maybe find something about Cuban art or Cuba as the reality…that they are not expecting to find,” Mariño said. “I really wish that people can at least question and ask themselves…about the particular reality of my country, to be honest, because it…is very important for all of us.”
Blackson found Mariño’s talk prior to the opening of the exhibit an inspiring example of connections between Chestertown and the broader world.
“I was so blown away by the turnout at [Mariño’s] talk, and all the multiple generations who came together to listen to what she had to say,” Blackson said.
Encouraging students to visit the space, Polio said that “Drafting Dissent” provides a lens for viewing the relationship between art and activism.
“I think art has a really strong ability to connect with people, and through that connection, you can say a lot about society or politics at the time,” Polio said. “Looking at the pieces [in the exhibit], you learn a lot about what people…want to see in society, and also…what it is they currently see.”
After “Drafting Dissent,” the “100 Proof” student artwork exhibition will be on display from March 21 through March 29. The senior capstone exhibition will follow it from April 11 until May 3.
Photo by Ella Humphreys.
Photo Caption: The Kohl Gallery is located in the Gibson Center for the Arts.