Christina: When one thinks of Cuba, the things that come to mind are sun, beach, music, rum, but there’s an art exhibit that set to change all of that. Hi, I’m Christina of watchmojo.com, we’re at Cuba, art and history from 1868 ‘til today. What makes Cuban art so unique that you devoted an entire show to it?
Stephame: What makes it special is that Cuba really held a very unique position over the century since its history. It was the richest Latin American country for decades if not centuries. And it developed a sense of uniqueness because it was an island, something that really, really special. We have these great historical events, the war with the United States, with Spain revolution and then the Fidel Castro revolution in the ’59, and then they have this unique condition of being one of the last communist countries in world that has moved away from communists utopians. Certainly because of the Embargo, it is not as well known to us as it should be. So when we saw this history, then my god it’s consistent, it’s unique, it’s a singular narrative and it’s, you can't, you know, confuse it with any other. And we said well, this is not just a project to do this. Not just a project. We should do an overall survey of Cuban art over the last century. It has never been done, and we should undertake this.
Christina: It also combines European culture and African culture as well as Christianity, and some other aspects of spirituality like Santo Dia for example.
Stephame: Well that’s another aspect of Cuban history that makes it so rich, this blend of European culture with the black African slave culture. All these mixed up in what they call mestizos culture. And certainly the exhibition is shows this, there is a revival of afro roots, afro – Cuban roots starting in the ‘30s and ‘40s mostly with Fedolan, and this is an important dimension of their way of conceiving themselves, their identity of their art, of their culture.
Christina: Part of this exhibits includes a large number of photographs, can you tell us how these photographs all fit into the exhibit.
Stephame: It allows for the, the documentation of history, mostly in the earlier years. See a documentation of society of class, of class struggles of poverty, of political historical events. You know, art responds in various ways to history, but photography, let’s say, for many years at the beginning of the century documented what was happening in a very direct way. But then photography also has a key role in the revolutionary period and we have these great photographers of Cuban revolution the corda. Make this, you know, this famous image of Che that’s on every T-shirt. The photographic moments of Cuba were very strong and we thought that they needed to be shown.