/ARTS WEEKLY/ CUBA: Spectre of Censorship Haunts Biennial

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Nov 4 2003 (IPS) - The pluralistic nature of the Havana Arts Biennial is being called into question in its eighth edition since emerging in 1984 as a space for artists of the developing South.

The withdrawal of two artists and the subsequent debate about artistic freedoms on the socialist-governed island have cast a shadow over this year’s exhibition.

Rafael Acosta, president of the governmental National Council for the Plastic Arts, said last week before the biennial’s opening Saturday that most of the 100 artists expected for the show had already arrived in Cuba.

More than 700 gallery directors, art critics and artists are expected to attend the event as observers, most coming from the United States, reinforcing a trend that was noted at the last biennial, in 2000.

In addition to the central exhibits, with works by the invited artists, the public is enjoying several parallel events, including 53 individual and 43 collective shows.

With the theme “Art with Life”, the Havana Biennial includes a gathering of performance artists, organised by Canada’s “Le Lieu” Contemporary Art Centre, and other art events that incorporate the capital’s urban spaces and promote community participation.

But a cloud hovers over the programme by the intense debate about artistic freedom in Cuba, triggered by the decision of artists Alexander Apóstol of Venezuela and Priscila Moge of Costa Rica to pull out of the biennial.

News of their withdrawal circulated via Internet since August, and with it the texts of the e-mails that the artists exchanged with the biennial organisers – in both cases regarding disagreements with written texts included in the presentation of their works.

“I think it is unacceptable to participate in an event where Cuban as well as foreign artists are being questioned and censored,” Moge wrote in a message to the Wifredo Lam Centre, a leading Cuban arts institution.

Apóstol, meanwhile, opted to pull out as a result of a dispute with Cuban curator Margarita Sánchez about a text by Argentina’s Eva Grinstein that was to accompany his work and which, according to Sánchez, could have threatened relations between Venezuela and Cuba.

An article by journalist Edgar Alfonso-Sierra, published in the Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional in August, stated that censorship had also extended to Guatemala’s Darío Escobar and Costa Rica’s Federico Herrero.

The result of what Cuban cultural officials referred to as a “media campaign” against the island was the retraction of funds for the biennial pledged by institutions from the Netherlands and France.

The biennial’s programme, which has always been one of the most important venues for non-Western artistic expression, is not as open as in previous years, said the Dutch-based HIVOS (Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries) in a communiqué. “Censorship is evident,” said the non-governmental organisation.

The Prince Claus Foundation, also of the Netherlands, linked its decision to withhold financial assistance for the event to the Fidel Castro government’s arrest of 75 dissidents last March, including several independent journalists.

A statement from the foundation states that the stiff sentences given the dissidents marks a significant deterioration in the situation of Cuban intellectuals and artists, and that it cannot collaborate with a biennial whose organisers do not distance themselves from official policy.

The foundation AFAA, an agency of France’s foreign ministry, cited bureaucratic difficulties in allocating funds for artists who were to travel to Havana from Africa.

“More than 200,000 dollars have been retracted from the event financing by foundations like Prince Claus and HIVOS, which provided 70 percent of the external funding for the previous Havana Biennial,” said the president of the National Council for the Plastic Arts.

According to Acosta, the funding cuts just four months before the opening of the biennial created a very difficult situation and obstructed the participation of artists who were to travel from distant countries, particularly from Asia and Africa.

To confront the crisis, the organisers turned to the Cuban government, which at the last minute agreed to provide a “ridiculously low budget” of 156,000 dollars, less than initially planned, but enough to go forward with the exhibition.

Numerous foreign artists decided to take part in the event in any case, seeking their own funding for their stay in Cuba, and with individual donations, said Acosta.

Contrary to the article in Venezuela’s El Nacional, the Cuban official maintained that in none of the cases mentioned by the newspaper were the artworks or artists censored by the biennial organisers.

Eugenio Valdés, a Cuban curator participating in the 4-D project (four dimensions, four decades) of the Rain Group, said in comments to IPS that he has run into “more than a few bureaucratic obstacles, but nothing at all related to censorship or limits on artistic freedom.”

Rain is a collective of artists, architects and curators from several countries. They have claimed the Cuba Pavilion expo centre in Havana to promote reflection about the city and urban spaces during the course of the biennial.

“We have put in a lot of work, especially because in Cuba we are not prepared to receive art outside the narrow sphere of the gallery or the museum. The gallery is seen as a recipient that contains art, and doesn’t spill out,” said Valdés.

Hilda María Rodríguez, director of the Havana Biennial, says the inclusion of interdisciplinary and multinational groups like Rain is proof of the plurality that she says characterises the event.

“The nature of the biennial is a sort of sine qua non. Above all it has been related to the diversity of expressions, disciplines, proposals, expositions, artists and voices,” said the Cuban cultural official.