LESLIE MOODY CASTRO: I had the pleasure of attending your talk at SOMA, and I was really interested in how you spoke about the idea of art and the utopian, and its relationship to Cuba. Can you elaborate a little bit more on this?

WILFREDO PRIETO: Yes, it’s about the importance of art in a social universe, but the reality is that it’s not understood in every society as a Utopia as such. My experience with utopias was also shaped romantically in this sense. Cuba considers art to be a social and philosophical moment, and each of those facets has a hierarchy. I think that placing those conditions on art in Cuba makes us think a lot about understanding art in a different way. It’s not just about concepts, such as education or the existence of a cultural life, but also involves the difficulties that exist in life, and how much art can give back to our life. There is something really rich about seeing art with a different lens and focus.

What are your thoughts on utopia within the context of Mexico? How do you think your work translates in Mexico, and the distinct location of Kurimanzutto Gallery?

Much more than a context, art is something that in aspects of life comes in and makes contexts more profound, rather than relying or depending on a context. Remaining dependent on a context places different conditions, which are clearly reflected differently. Mexico is, of course, a country with an incredible matrix, including chaos and crisis, which are cultural generators. Crisis, paradoxically, generates great artists and great moments. I think Mexicans are good at tempting dialogue, confrontations with artists, and this is what I think is different about exhibiting here.

There is also something to be said about the fact that Mexico is always close to Cuba, in which it has similar direct references: cultural, historical, social, all of it. For me, it is like a school. To come to Mexico and do nothing more than walk through the streets you are continually receiving information and translating this information.

In terms of contexts, what do you think of the United States as a regional context? What are your thoughts on the proliferation of arts from Latin America and Mexico in the States?

I don’t think geography offers a different context but is enriched in other ways. Art is speaking a language, a direct, incisive message, and it does depend a bit on the context of culture of the individual who is seeing it, but not necessarily the location. I lived for a short time in New York and honestly it bored me. I think things happening there artistically, in my opinion, seemed too dependent on what the market dictated, which was creating a sense of self censorship instead of making work in which the market was encapsulated.

It has always been a place that could bring the best from other places, including Latin America. But the best of Latin America is happening in Latin America, it’s not happening in the United States or Europe. I think that’s why there’s a delay: when museums first start worrying about starting collections of Latin American art they are still two years behind in comparison to when the explosions in Mexico, Cuba, Colombia. There’s a tremendous tardiness. There’s a text by Gerardo Mosquera, which I love, that talks about the art from Latin America but not “Latin American Art” and this is also something I think is really important, to not have these things defining tags or limitations. 

Well, speaking of these relationships between contexts, people, and places: are you yourself interested in the thoughts or ideas that people project onto your work?

I think that the relationship that one has with the work in the moment is one that offers a relationship as a spectator, not a creator, as one that takes distance and can take someone to a place that they hadn’t even thought of. The work can change the path; it can offer a new route. The public is also so diverse that I think they simply enrich the language of art in a different way than say, criticism can, or any other type of communication. It’s a total adventure, though one that also has certain patrons, and the motives that come with them.

And when you are thinking of a work in a space, do you guide or think of this dialogue that can occur between the piece, the space, and even more specifically, the public?

I don’t necessarily think about the public, but certainly thinking about the space. I think space is another tool for communication. A work needs to live in a real space, which also includes a utopia — such as this exhibition at Kurimanzutto — or there can be others that really need the hierarchy of the white cube, and each one has completely different characteristics. That is to say, I believe the space, the museography, the curation, are also part of the work because they also activate communication.

Some of these tools are also the titles.

Of course, titles are very much tools. I think it is very important, when one constructs an order, that it has levels and each one of these has to be very well conceptualized when it is necessary. You see that you are activating something from a determined element. We ourselves have to move, but there is a compensation of elements that helps you make the idea in the space effective.

Speaking of space and the works, let’s talk a little bit more about the exhibition at Kurimanzutto. There is a very ephemeral piece outside the gallery itself, on the open street, titled Puñado de cobre, níquel y zinc (“a handful of copper, nickel, and zinc,” 2016). This work is almost an invisible gesture with which to open the exhibition and it will slowly become more and more invisible throughout the run of the show.

It will always be there. It will become more and more imperceptible with the soles of shoes walking over it, cars, rain, and it’s something that becomes more and more imperceptible throughout the entire month, and will also be more and more subtle, more lost within the space, but it endures. It really deals with the question of the abstract illusory conscious. The piece is also really made of illegal materials, since it is illegal to destroy money.

It is made with Mexican pesos. The coins have been turned into dust.

Yes, exactly. Yet what should be illegal is the taking this original mineral from its original location in order to convert it into money. That should be illegal. I like this contradiction as social consensus, how we have this concept that is so historically determined that now gives us what we think is a sense of clarity above the consent of its location of origin.

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November 6 to December 19, 2015
530 West 21st Street (between 10th and 11th avenues)
New York, 212 206 7606

Standing in Gladstone’s 21^st Street gallery, Jean Tinguely’s sculptures might run the risk of appearing jokey and dumb. Some do, but being jokey and dumb doesn’t preclude being serious and intellectually engaging, which Tinguely’s work is. Negotiating presumed contradictions is usually difficult, but they’re often not true binaries, and those qualities that are considered dichotomous turn out to have a complicated relationship. Dumb and smart, at least in some art, in Tinguely’s work, are interdependent.

In a 1975 review of Brice Marden’s work, Mel Ramsden wrote that he didn’t think it’s stupid, but that it’s dumb. There’s a big difference. In some ways, this is studio shorthand: as Ramsden notes, Marden himself, that same year, said, “A painter’s just this odd weird person who has to do this dumb thing called painting.”[1] One important distinction is that while “stupid” implies a moral judgment, “dumb” typically doesn’t. It’s not pejorative. Dumb is big, blunt, crude, juvenile, corporeal, synonymous with mute. As an aesthetic strategy, dumb can smuggle a lot of complex information. Tinguely’s dada lineage is visible in the absurdity of his artworks, but there’s something more in being dumb. Beyond an artwork addressing the viewer as an invitation to play, it invites the viewer to grapple. One might consider the work of Richard Serra, Roxy Paine, Tim Hawkinson, or John O’Connor.[2] The same goes for other media — dumb video, dumb performance, dumb sculpture, etc. It needn’t be confined to kinetic art or sculpture.

The Tinguely exhibition features work made between 1954 and 1991, and its dumb may be harder to detect now. Some of this invisibility can be accounted in time and canonization, the hermetic seal of their historicity. Art is often expected to be erudite and sophisticated, savvy even in irreverence. Tinguely opens his hands and offers: Here is a thing made of garbage and it might disintegrate. In addition to the multicolored lights and spinning feathers, twirling poodles, that adorn his sculptures, Gladstone underscores the comic tone with large red buttons, which viewers step on to activate their kinetic features.[3]

The onanistic and spasmodic pieces rumble and screech and shake, powered by old motors. They smell, look, and sound decrepit. Trüffelsau (1984) sharpens the metaphor, with a boar’s skull blindly chewing air, foraging nothing. Its jaw is forced open by a rotating, motorized piece of driftwood attached at the left side, connected to the mandible by a jerking, twisted metal armature. Another, Untitled (1990), mounts an antelope skull on a rocking pendulum, powered by a motor and a rotted tire. A slat of sheet metal appears to have been torqued and worn into a wavering ribbon by the repetitive motion of being mindlessly rammed by the mechanical pendulum. In many pieces it’s unclear what purpose certain parts serve, or if they do at all.

A recent book by designer, artist, and amateur ethnographer Ernesto Oroza, entitled Rikimbili (2008), depicts constructions reminiscent of Tinguely, found in Cuba and made by common people trying to create machines to fill technological gaps with handmade antennae, repurposed motors, improvised battery chargers, motor bikes, and other devices. As Oroza explains, gadgets often come with a set of manufacturer-proscribed allusions that limit their possible uses, whereas these backyard inventors “liberate” objects from such strictures, repurposing and re-organizing components into novel, unsophisticated tools — a discipline he calls “technological disobedience.” They highlight the dysfunction of centrally planned consumer goods, assist in black market trade, and also serve as a model contrary to capitalist production. Like Tinguely’s assemblages, they strip existing information from devices (brands, patents, target markets, functionality, the timeline of planned obsolescence, international supply chains) and make curious, unexpected mutants.

And, similarly, Tinguely’s rude robot functionaries can be read against capitalist labor relations just as easily and effectively as they could be used to flog any of its historical alternatives — the headlessness of Marxism’s obsession with production, class, and technological development. Tinguely’s dumb can be critical, as in Oroza’s technological disobedience, and so, too, in its refusal of articulation. It pushes viewers in broad directions, but needs them to close finer hermeneutic gaps.

Tinguely’s work has been analogized with Rube Goldberg contraptions,[4] whose complex mechanisms achieve small tasks. But that’s wrong since, even less than Goldberg, his machines actually do nothing. They shudder and groan, perform spastic fits. Raichle Nr. 1 (1974) presents ski boots holding up large shears with a rusty armature. Press the button and the blades begin cutting, with blind and fearsome violence. The mechanical age is supposed to be surpassed by the digital, the information. The motorized, headless relics here are fun and frightening.

[1] Emphasis added

[2] It’s unclear whether or not this is largely a male phenomenon.

[3] This is, apparently, SOP for contemporary curations of Tinguely’s work.

[4] As by Alfred Barr in a press release for Tinguely’s 1960 Homage to New York performance at the Museum of Modern Art.

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Fusco considers performances by artists such as Angel Delgado, El Sexto (Danilo Maldonado Machado), Sandra Ceballos, and collectives such as Omni Zona Franca, the Department of Public Interventions and Enema in light of how their work addresses the Cuban political context. While she discusses artistic censorship and the rules of conduct specific to the island, she compares Cuba’s situation with social and political restrictions in other contexts, including countries widely perceived as “free.” I recently spoke with Fusco about Dangerous Moves, and she expanded on these ideas and more.

LEE ANN NORMAN: In the book, you speak specifically about the unique political situation that gave rise to public performance practices in Cuba. Can you talk a bit more about that?

COCO FUSCO: I grew up during the Cold War, and at that time Fidel Castro was public enemy number one, spoken of publicly the way that Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden are today. Every news story about Cuba in the 1960s and 1970s underscored that there was no freedom there. It’s true that political culture on the island is more centralized and authoritarian than in the US, but it’s also true that in the US, for all the rhetoric about freedom, the art world is run by a very small elite, and artists who do not produce work that is in fashion have a hard time securing a place for themselves professionally. Just because we don’t talk about this situation as representative of a lack of freedom, it doesn’t mean that there is no policing of culture here.

Right. I think as Americans, we tend to accept popular media narratives that show our society as the ideal liberal one, and everything else as repressive…

Americans don’t think about the rules of behavior that they conform to because they’re socialized not to see them. We do have very strong codes of conduct here, though. We tend to focus on controls relating to obscenity and sexuality, but think about social codes that are imposed in public spaces like shopping malls or schools. Let’s not forget the recent news story that went viral about Black women who visited a winery and were thrown off a train because they were laughing “too loudly,” whatever that means.

When looking at codes of conduct in Cuba, we have to understand the role they play in the shaping of political behavior. One of the articles of the Cuban penal code refers to social dangerousness, a term that includes public drunkenness and modes of behavior determined to run counter to socialist morality. There are Communist party officials and divisions within the Cuba police whose duty is to identity those engaging in these modes of conduct. There are also socially and politically unacceptable behaviors in the United States. The main difference is that in Cuba, power is centralized, which makes the repercussions for engaging in potentially criminal behavior more draconian. People operate with a clear sense of what is and what is not permitted. If they don’t know, someone will remind them very quickly.

How did performance emerge as a public action? What is that history in this context?

Performance produced self-consciously as art begins in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with a generation of young artists who wanted to shake things up. Their first forays were not so confrontational. Art students staged interventions in their classes because they felt the Soviet pedagogy being imposed on them was retrograde. Some of the artists who spearheaded the renaissance of the early 1980s in Cuba would stage performances privately for friends so they could experiment and not be interrupted. Some of their performances were about policing, state security, excessive bureaucratic control of culture, or the poor food that was being rationed to the population.

Things changed in the mid-’80s when artists such as Juan Sí González and Arte Calle (a group that tried to be clandestine but was “outed” very quickly) began creating street interventions without permission. The reactions varied. Some thought the work was too hot to handle. Others decried that it was not really art, but only a political provocation. There were other people who silently approved, but a sector of the art community expressed the fear that the more politically edgy artists were taking risks that would provoke negative reactions to young artists as a whole, and because of this they rejected their aesthetic proposals entirely.

How were these artists and their performances received? Were critics and historians dismissive, thinking of them like fame seekers?

Some art historians and critics were dismissive of those artists at the time, but I don’t think anyone was saying that they were seeking fame. That wasn’t the language being used. You don’t get famous in Cuba by getting arrested. Many of the artists faced negative judgment by their peers. State bureaucrats said they were provocateurs, but the worst accusation that could be levied against them was that they were “dissidents” because it meant they would lose any protections they might have as artists. Their work would be reconfigured as political provocation, and it is the police’s job to handle that. I remember the time when critics and curators ignored performance art in New York. The commercial art world thought it was a joke. I certainly wouldn’t single Cuba out as being more opposed to performance than other countries, but the centralization of power in the state is special. The Cuban state has the power to determine an artist’s life in a manner that is not very different from the way that the art market wields power over artists in the United States.

What changes, if any, have you seen in Cuban performance art now that the US and Cuba are re-engaging diplomatically?

The rapprochement between the governments of Cuba and the United States in the past year has not produced a change that would conform to any notion of liberalization. On the contrary, what we’ve seen in the last year has been a rise in the detention of people doing street actions. Cuban culture is changing, though, in two ways.

First, the Ministry of Culture is, like all state entities, losing much of its state funding. Administrators are being encouraged to seek alternative sources of financing. The cultural ministry is getting more involved in joint ventures with private investors, both Cuban and foreign. For example, La Fábrica in Havana, a hybrid nightclub, bar, and exhibition and performance space in an old factory, opened not that long ago. It’s a joint venture between the Ministry of Culture, music promoters, and local musicians. The bars are run by private entities, and local designers have display stands throughout. This kind of public-private endeavor is happening more and more in Cuba.

The pursuit of hard currency has completely transformed the Cuban art sector in the past 25 years. Events such as the Havana Biennial rely on money from tourists — not only for funding the event, but also because the back room sales of Cuban artworks allow many artists to live comfortably for months, even years after the exhibition. As the public sector shrinks and the value of Cuban salaries declines, artists become more dependent on the sale of their work. The Ministry of Culture continues to wield power as the broker between artists and foreign collectors, dealers and curators. There have been a lot of articles in foreign press recently suggesting that Cuba has a treasure trove of great cheap art, so this is the moment for foreign collectors to get in and invest. That actually drove a lot of people to go to the last Havana Biennial. What we’re talking about here is economic change, not political change.

Fusco, Coco. Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba. (London: Tate, 2015). ISBN-13: 978-1849763264, 192 pages, $27.8

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In June 2011, the New York Times ran a feature on New Ways to visit Cuba –Legally. The feature documented policy changes by the Obama administration designed to encourage greater contact between Americans and Cubans under a “people-to-people license.” Originally created by President Clinton in 1999, the licenses were cut off by Bush in 2003 and 2004. Under Obama, restrictions are being loosened. The projection was that 450,000 travelers from the US would be visiting Cuba in 2011.

The story ended by giving readers a list of planned people-to-people trips to Cuba, among them the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. who were planning to run an eight-day trip in November, pending license, with visits to the studios of several well-known Cuban artists.  I was able to join this group.

Ricardo Torres Perez, a macro-economist and professor at the University of Havana, addressed the group, explaining to us that while the average monthly wage is around 400 Cuban pesos a month or $17, and for medical doctors 700-800 pesos a month or about $34, artists are a notable exception, having been one “of the most successful segments of the Cuban population.” The Cuban government was always “careful about not interfering with the way artists produce art,” Perez said. “Artists have way more freedom to do what they want to do.” Gloria Berbena, public affairs officer for the United States Interests Section, agrees: “The regime always supported and subsidized artists.” Although some exit visas have occasionally been revoked, generally speaking artists have benefited from political tolerance. They are free to travel but the vast majority return to Cuba. “For Cuban artists, their inspiration comes from being here, from the light. They have a strong attachment to the country,” she said.

The prevailing stereotype of the starving artist driving a taxi or waiting on tables  is, surprisingly, not the Cuban model. Unlike doctors or teachers who work for the government at a fixed salary in mondea nacional, the local peso (the equivalent of four cents U.S.), artists can actually sell their art on the open market for CUCs (convertible Cuban pesos which are pegged to the U.S. dollar and which are used to buy all imported goods) or for dollars.

Although art galleries, where the gallery takes 30 percent and the artist 70 percent, are all government owned, individual artists are also free to sell their art from their studios (not considered galleries) where they receive 100 percent of the purchase price. Visitors can either pay in CUCS or by wiring money into foreign bank accounts

Even after progressive income tax that ranges from 5-40 % and a 7 % exit permit, works selling for $1,000 net more than two years of a doctor’s salary. Even street artists, who sell a work on average every couple of months for $200 or $300, can live comfortably off of their art.

Sandra Ramos is in the States when we visit her studio where prints in editions of 10 sell for $1500 to $2500. Ramos, who will be participating in the May 2012 Havana Biennial, has a Canadian bank account and also sells her art in the Mayer Fine Arts Gallery in Norfolk, Virginia. Although Ramos’s work focuses on human frustration and contradictions in Cuban society, she is free to make her art. A 2011 work, The Bridge, uses a girl’s body to connect two bridges. Another new work, Miedo Secreto (Secret Fear) focuses on how people use their eyes. Often, Ramos uses her own body to represent the island of Cuba. Clearly, Ramos is very successful. Our guide tells us that she bought the house eight years ago for $50,000.

At the home/studio of artist couple Alicia Leal and Juan Moriera, who plan to open their space to the public for the May biennale, we were shown etchings, paintings and photographs. Moriera’s recent photographic work is based on paintings he did many years ago, “of places that do not exist.” He is eager to find a New York gallery to exhibit the digital prints. A small etching by Leal reflects her deep identification with her Cuban heritage. “It is inspired by Jose Marti’s line, she said, translating it for me: “My poetry is like a wounded deer looking for the forest’s sanctuary.”

More than any other artists we met, the three sculptors in the Merger group – Mayito (Mario Miguel Gonzalez), Niels Moleiro Luis, and Alain Pino – illustrate just how resourceful and savvy Cuban artists have become. With bank accounts in three countries, their sculpture currently sells in the $8,000 to $40,000 price range, while studies for the sculpture sell for $5,000 to $8,000. Auction prices for their work have been especially strong: Sex Machine sold for $23,750 in Sotheby’s November Latin American Art sale, above its $10-15,000 estimate. Working for Freedom, sold for $26,250 in Christie’s May 2011 Latin American Auction, also above its estimate. In 2009, one of their Cuban pocket knife sculptures sold for $25,000. Hanging in the entrance to their studio, a 2011 edition of the work, priced at $16,000, immediately attracted strong interest from an American couple on the tour.

Under a Cuban government program, the Merger trio are renovating an old laundry building. Designed to include one bedroom for a visiting artist, the first stage of La Lavanderia will be finished in May. The artists, meanwhile, are working on their next solo exhibition in February, Foria Havana, a joint venture between Spain and Cuba. They are also looking for an American gallery. “We had a couple offers from galleries in Miami,” Mayito said. “But we are waiting until the right gallery comes along. The right place for us is San Francisco, Los Angeles or New York. Ninety-nine percent of our clients are from there.”

While Mayito and Alain acknowledge their success, they insist that most artists in Cuba live off of their art, with 30-35 percent of them earning a very good living, some already selling their art at auction. “There is lots of interest surging towards Cuban art,” Mayito said, “In a few years there will be a big explosion like what happened with Chinese art several years ago.”

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