Sights and Sounds: Cuba
Sights and Sounds: Cuba features new work by Sandra Ramos, Diana Montero, Reynier Leyva Novo, and Vanessa Portieles and Yanelvis González, selected by Mailyn Machado.
This selection of videos by Cuban artists living in Cuba and Florida focuses on a prominent issue in the island’s modern history: the challenge of staying or leaving, and the cultural and social effects of that dilemma. Cuba was long defined as a society that received immigrants; that changed with the Revolution of 1959. Waves of emigration throughout the last half-century have become a familiar, and highly politicized, phenomenon. Until a very recent change in the law, emigration was a permanent one-way trip.
A second large influence on recent art was the severe economic crisis of the 1990s, which undermined public confidence in the Revolution and its legacy. The family was at the epicenter of individual response to this problem (and hence is a frequent subject of video artists); emigration was now seen not as a political statement but a personal choice. Equally significant was the rise of an underground economy that sustained the country.
The social bonds produced by these changes, as well as uneven access to new technologies, have caused new networks and communities to develop among Cubans both at home and abroad, forming a complex new cultural geography. The four videos seen here are, in a sense, a barometer of these social shifts. Video is especially well-adapted to this role; in Cuba, in order to evade the state monopoly on media, it has become a person-to-person medium, a conduit between the audience and reality, a record of fragments of life that flows from hand to hand, from computer to computer, unofficially.
Mailyn Machado
Curator
Mailyn Machado (b. Havana, 1976) is an art and media critic and curator. She has organized exhibitions for the Museum of Fine Arts, Havana, the Havana Biennial, and the Cultural Centers of Spain in America, among other institutions. She is the chief editor of the magazine La Gaceta de Cuba. Her writing has appeared in Cuban and foreign publications. Machado earned a degree in art history from the University of Havana in 2001, and completed postgraduate studies in art criticism at Gerona University, Spain, in 2006.
About Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video
This long-term series offers a rotating selection of vigorous film and video works by contemporary artists from around the world — with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.
Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video is a long-term presentation of new film and video works made in the sphere of the visual arts. The series offers a rotating selection of vigorous works by contemporary artists from around the world. It introduces New York audiences to the latest developments in filmmaking within the art context and underlines the Jewish Museum’s holistic and global approach to the understanding and presentation of art and culture.
Sights and Sounds takes advantage of the straightforward way film and video travel: shipped on discs or streamed online, these works provide an instant connection to new creative practices from even the most remote locations.
Twenty-five international curators have selected new film and video work from their respective regions of the world—ranging from Argentina to Vietnam, Nigeria to Romania, New Zealand to China, and many places in between. Their picks are screened for one month each in the museum’s media center, which has been turned into a miniature cinema for the occasion.
The works in Sights and Sounds touch on themes significant to both Jewish culture and universal human experience: spirituality, exile, language, conflict, family, humor, history. The series creates a broad network of artistic expression and curatorial perspectives that takes stock of what is happening in film and video art at this moment in time across the globe—with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.
Sights and Sounds will culminate with a selection of highlights from the series. One work from each country will be presented in the gallery from February 5, 2016 to June 30, 2016.
Jens Hoffmann
Deputy Director
Exhibitions and Public Programs
Installation view of Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video in the Goodkind Media Center. Photo by David Heald.
Exhibition highlights
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Sandra Ramos, still from Naufragio (Shipwreck), 2008, video, sound, 2 min., 46 sec. Artwork © Sandra Ramos
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Diana Montero, still from Él Eres Tú (He Is You), 2012, video, sound, 15 min. Artwork © Diana Montero
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Reynier Leyva Novo, still from Deporte Nacional (National Sport), 2010, video, sound, 9 min., 55 sec. Artwork © Reynier Leyva Novo
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Vanessa Portieles and Yanelvis González, still from Afuera (The Other Side), 2012, film, sound, 22 min., 7 sec. Artwork © Vanessa Portieles and Yanelvis González
