Publications about Omar Estrada's work

Imagine: Cuba Libre! (Sun, Sea & Socialism)

By Erica H. Adams
This Side Up!, Volume 13, Spring 2001

In those days of extreme poverty, the dream of all who were down-and-out in Cuba was to go north to work. My uncle Argelio did go... he sent us a photo in which he was steering a luxurious motorboat... years later I discovered the trick: One would go to a special photographic studio and have one's picture taken while sitting in a cardboard boat with a cardboard ocean as the background. In Cuba everybody thought my uncle was driving his own boat.

Reinaldo Arenas, Before the Night Falls

Cuba Libre (Free Cuba) is a Rum and Coke drink.

We loved Che. Now, 43 years after the revolution, youth thank Castro for their free education and health care, pointing to a John Lennon statue Castro recently consecrated, inscribed "You may say I´m a dreamer, but I´m not the only one..." from Lennon´s Imagine. Korda¹s iconic Che photo was resurrected alongside the Catholic Church¹s sanctioned return to Cuba during the "Special Period" (1991-96) of deprivation coincident with subsidies lost from the Soviet Union´s collapse. The on-going U.S. embargo is no small factor. Che presides throughout Havana´s spectacular landscape: Billboards celebrate revolution and frame Havana airport´s higpuay infrequented by Batista era cars, recent imports and horse drawn carts. From store interiors, Che surveys elegant neighborhoods that look like war zones sparingly renovated by Miami relatives or architectural preservationists. Four economies provide the highest standard of living in the Caribbean with erratic scarcities. Plaza de la Revolución´s Ministry of the Interior´s facade outlines Che´s face in bronze replacing frescos then, papier mâché displayed after his death. He faces national hero, José Martí whose 454 foot communist modern obelisk is the highest point of this breathtakingly beautiful city rising from ruins. Apart from tv news, Castro´s invisible, yet evidently conditions every aspect of daily life. There are no casual conversations concerning Cuba. Strange for Americans who turn every tragedy into a comic routine in less than 24 hours. This incongruous atmosphere appears to have provoked Cuban artists and musicians into becoming among the world´s most vibrant, human and penetrating heroes: Just in time for Global Capitalism!

The 7th Havana Biennial (November-December 2000) has been anticipated since third world artist´s flooded the 1999 Venice Biennale´s predictable Euro-American core from its margins challenging biennials that followed: Cuba accepted. Their theme Más cerca uno del otro (Closer to one another) was a clear gesture towards open communication. And, to the U.S. whose citizens are forbidden to travel to Cuba, as Cubans can not easily leave their island. Isolation is the enemy. Artists are the antidote.

The New York-European art world crowded November´s art openings and symposiums throughout old Havana, La Rampa, El Morro and Vedado with third world artists, and 25 exhibitions of 1960-90´s Cuban art, ceramics, film posters and graphics with some first world collaborations. Biennials introduce cities through art: Old Havana, an astounding UNESCO world heritage site contains Cuba´s hope linked to tourism and dollars. Placing attention on Havana´s architecture and its preservation through art, installations directly transmitted Cuba´s voice. Even Frank Gehry spoke at Havana´s architecture school.

Continuation

Disenchanted with Marxism´s ability to describe or reform society, Edmund Wilson´s 1938 essays "The Triple Thinkers" offered a third way out: Neither art-for-art´s sake´s self cultivated garden, nor its double, art as political action dedicated to social reform, but art´s third way - an art that functions as a moral guide created from tension between inner and outer worlds.

Unofficial Bienal participants, Cuban brothers Omar and Carlos Estrada de Zayas´ installation Crónica del Grito exemplified its ultimate offering: Improvisation and clarity born of the urgency to dialogue as a survival mechanism that engages the "other" or, foreigner. Replacing Bienal sanctioned works with their own was a radical context to address, Omar says "the illusion of the absolute given the permanence of change in which archetypes lose their significance depending on where your context for analysis is." Omar insists his cardboard horse, The Gallop is "not political" but "a very cultural toy." Coercing the bike pedal stirrup revolves the saddle´s rotoscope. This creates "the illusion of movement" in Muyerbridge´s horse and rider sequence seen through vertical slits. Omar manipulates the language of toys to allude to an innocence not limited to children to believe in the illusion of freedom, or better, the illusion of illusion... Omar insisted art "doesn't permit me to be an absolutist because as an artist, I risk being too close to what it means to be a human being. So, I can be virtually free." In Carlos´ Theological Reaffirmation, a mannequin hand reaches beyond its suspended tv-dish nave; its disfunctional electrical wire originates from inside a cage whose open door is situated behind a barred window. Imagine.

Havana´s streets offered art-as-public-service-announcements offsetting government billboards promoting "Sun, Sea and Socialism." Seeing Otherwise, New York team Jennifer Allora (USA) and Guillermo Calzadilla (Cuba) billboard series depicts Cubans facing the distant "other": From El Morro prison facing Havana´s Malecón seawall. And, facing Miami, 80 miles from Malecón where Cubans exit every July and August on rafts. Nearby, in La Rampa, the Batista era hang-out fast becoming lush life central, Argentine Grupo Escombros installed their "gift" waste container labeled Radioactive; Infectious Substances; With best wishes for our friends from Third World countries, from the rich nations.

Bottles washed ashore without messages became a common Cuban motif: Kcho´s sitcomish installation crowded bottles against a pier while Carlos Estévez Carasa, who still lives in Cuba, lined-up alchemical drawings over a limitless incantation of empty bottles.

Overall, Cuban artists´ dialectic and materialism included a disproportionate number of life-sized works with mannequins, bottles, cages and cast-off materials. Esterio Segura Mora´s corrosive, exemplary works were minimally lit in dank, cavernous El Morro, once a prison. Icons of exhaustive improvisations in communication are etched with acidic clarity: Submerged in darkness, Voices Heard From Something Moving in the Water´s blue-jeaned mannequin stands encased in a winged cage as a soundless loudspeaker grows from his mouth. A wire emits from another mannequins mouth. His breath powers a fragile luminous bellflower floating at the ceiling´s confines of Where Silence Stops Silence. Upstairs, a narrow ramp descends into a wall of corroded typewriters. Under their crushing presence, a mannequin sleeps on rotting stacks of newspapers apparently haunted by his [Mora´s] futile, Space Occupied by a Dream. An infinite labyrinth of dreams enclosed dreams: Where to go from here? In a strange reversal of an out-of-body experience, another Cuban artist suspended a life-sized, tattooed wooden effigy of a Taino indian over an absent body schematically rendered in glass plates. Etched lines mark its ghostly shell with electronic circuitry replacing the human one. Will to survival and to communicate is our most powerful human possession: Cuban artists have illuminated the way.

Erica H. Adams
Boston