CONTEMPORARY CUBAN ART

Human loneliness or with the roots in the air Rafael Villares separates the root from the trunk of a tree brought down by a hurricane and hooks it onto the ceiling in the middle of the gallery. The room is dark and a there´s a light projected from above that reflects on the ground the shadow of the tangled rhizome. The original environment is simulated with sounds that come from the root’s womb: branches rustled in the wind and birds singing. The object and its reflection are exposed. The wild creature is completed in the memory and associations of the viewer. It remains mutilated while contemplating its reality in the current placement. Soledad humana (Human loneliness) is part of the Tenth Biennial exhibitions as one of the collateral shows that involve students from the San Alejandro Art Academy. With the installation, Villares proposed "the rescue of wasted moments in our life, moments unnoticed or neglected by their false simplicity." This young artist was already known for the series Finisterre, which won the first prize of the eighth Digital Art Salon.

Lennon’s sister-in-law paints a message of peace During the Eighth Biennial she left her Ecstasy of love at Lennon Park: a sculpture made of steel inspired by the ancient Japanese tradition of origami or paper folding. Today, during the Tenth, she offers her argument in favor of the Palestinian people through paintings gathered at Casa de Asia (House of Asia) under the title “To a beautiful land: resistance to the overwhelming force and dreams of peace. Setsuko Ono, Yoko's sister, is an economist who spent 28 years between the World Bank and the InterAmerican Development Bank, and took painting and sculpture classes, as a hobby at the Corcoran School of Art and Design in 1984. Only after retirement, she decided to start a career, and was just in the Havana Biennial in 2003 when she made her debut with the exhibit Dreams. Now that she did not receive the travel permission to return to Cuba, she sent a statement where she declares how the seed of her paintings comes from a trip to Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt in 1968. Works such as "Holy Life" and "Tomorrow" reveal an artist determined to win followers through sensitivity and not through demagogic speeches.

The Magnificent Seven from China: Review (I) Facing the Malecón in Havana, the Centro Hispanoamericano de Cultura hosts China: Contemporary Art Review, a short look to the highly valued contemporary Chinese art, represented through seven of its exponents. At the first glance the work "Bedroom" by Wang Qingsong, the only photographer in the group, reminds us of Spencer Tunick, but there are substantial differences between both artists. The famous American places naked models in already existing sites of high symbolic value, where the "human installation" is the only intervention, while the Asiatic artist completely manufactures stages in which the portrayed action takes place. Also, Tunick's icy "naturalism" and his use of “art as a metaphor” are in contrast with Qingsong’s ironic, even crude representations, which make direct reference to reality in modern China.

The Magnificent Seven from China: Review (II) "Tai Chi" and "Sitting meditation" reveal that Chen Bo affirms Chinese culture pure spirituality and thus seeks that the strict colors and scant details of his paintings hold on to the represented subject. Qiu Xiaofei cites traditional genres, such as landscapes and scenes from everyday life, to remake them with the thick brushstrokes of the new figuration. Chengyun Wang, with his "School of the Sky," focuses on emotions and distress, treated pictorially in the manner of neoexpressionists. Cactus, Zhou Wenzhong’s series, offers a colorful, playful and slovenly visual puzzle that impels to unravel the "subject" of his painting. In contrast, Xiong Yu is precious and tender despite the coldness of the color blue, and his works are centered on nature. The pieces of the seventh guest Liu Xiaodong, were placed in El Morro fortress, where people can appreciate the unique perspective with which the artist faces realistic painting.

Survivors, according to Roberto Fabelo "Disgusting", said a woman who was on a bus and passed in front of the National Museum of Fine Arts. Franz Kafka, the "rare" writer from Prague, would of course think otherwise, and applaud the artist who made real and multiplied Gregory Samsa, the character that undergoes The metamorphosis. The reason of these crossed perceptions is a squad of cockroaches that climb up the outer wall of the museum. They carry human heads and its architect, Roberto Fabelo, named them Sobrevivientes (Survivors). This is not the first time this Cuban artist, recognized for his skills in drawing and painting, surprises and dazzles the audience by varying his pictorial imagery to build three-dimensional works. Now, thanks to the ingenious combination of materials (plastic? and a skeleton made of thick wires) in the development of giant creatures and the undeniable visual impact of the installation, Fabelo shows, like never before, his ability to reinvent himself.

The igloo and one word in La Casona Today, an extravagant construction in the context of a tropical climate can be seen in the courtyard of the Gallery La Casona. "The Eskimos have no poetry" is how Douglas Arguelles (Havana, 1977) entitled the installation that imitates a four meters high igloo made of polystyrene foam. Inside, a video projector throws images that show the disastrous reality of present times. For Douglas his work is a symbol of cultural and human survival. Meanwhile, George Wellesley (Havana, 1979) occupies the mansion’s mezzanine with a work that at first glance seems far from the minimal conceptualism and the advertisements in lights that shape his previous works. His installation reproduces the rail of a roller coaster, with sharp ups and downs, and it disguises the fact that in the turns of the route a sober but powerful message is mapped out: the word that designates all terms, "Word."

With advertising and signs: Kdir Lopez "On the basis of advertising, I elaborate printed metaphors about places, moments and events related to the history of companies that were nationalized in Cuba after 1959." So describes Kdir Lopez what Signs proposed as one of the exhibitions included in the solo shows program of the Tenth Biennial. He covered a couple of rooms in La Acacia gallery with 31 pieces of his own, in which the photographic moment, the application of mixed media and the original motives: enameled metal sheets used 50 years ago for propaganda and advertising mix (and merge). The artist considers each of these creations as a sort of "capsules of past times brought to the present" which would be enrolled in the endless cycle of eternal return of facts and things. Confronting Signs will let these doubts: Nostalgia or Hope? Alert or Pessimism?

Chelsea visits Havana: The fine line between Art and Politics Dialogue? Confrontation? Silence? These ideas can only show their profiles to the viewers, but the leaders of Cuba and the U.S. are facing each other with an expectant attitude in the piece "Castrobama” made by Padraig Tarrant. But the subjective interpretations on the world of high politics are not those that quantitatively set the tone in these 39 works from 33 artists representing 28 galleries of a major New York City art district. Chelsea visits Havana, hosted by the National Museum of Fine Arts in the Cuban capital, provides a wide outlook of the present artistic creation born in America, through paintings, sculptures and installations characterized by the use of technology and new materials. It also shows the vision of its authors on universal problems of the individual and societies. However, it is difficult to ignore the political nuance when one consider that this is the first time in 25 years that American art is widely exhibited on the island and that the restrictions for any kind of exchange between both countries forced the works to travel in a boat from Florida and packed next to a load of food.

Cordero, what is happening ... and what will happen For those who have been following the latest works of Raul Cordero with the use of video and new media, the exhibition that opened at La Acacia Gallery in the context of the Tenth Biennial, will seem like the "return to painting" that this artist previously experienced in the already distant 90's. However, in his Nuevas Pinturas (New Paintings), even more than in his prior works, an offshoot of the Digital Age is disclosed. He uses the traditional oil and canvas only as a conceptual subterfuge, maybe as a way to declare that, at present times, we are nor far from yesterday or from tomorrow. The scenes and characters of his paintings are blurred, evanescent; the reasons are transparent and superimposed and there are even planted messages in an "electronic” style, so that the pieces seem to be digital montages. A video with alternating anachronistic visions of nowadays and the slogan: "What will happen is what is happening," is a good definition of Cordero´s artistic M.O.

Where will the elephants of Havana water tomorrow? I saw them on March 30th at the Plaza Vieja. In their itinerary they stopped the next day by the National Capitol. And then their journey continued, until April 6th in the Miramar Trade Center. There are of various ages and sizes; an entire herd of pachyderms made of metal on its long march through the Cuban capital symbolizes a struggle for the survival of creatures on planet Earth (not just elephants but humans too). Memoria & Memory is the title of this initiative that the Cuban artist JEFF (José Emilio Fuentes Fonseca) produced in this Tenth Biennial. He has developed a technique for the assembly of figures using steel plates and welds, which then he inflates with tons of air pressure. The elephants’ tour -as representing a procession they go from one spot to another in the city- does not occur in random places but in locations that are symbols of the national history.

10 in 25? Havana Biennial When March 27th, 2009 arrives the Havana Biennial's will declare the opening day of its tenth edition and it will also be celebrating, paradoxically, its 25 anniversary. How come if 1984 marked the debut of a mega event designed to alternate years, the Biennial will reach the count of ten a quarter-century after its naissance? The explanation for this curious fact is to be found in the great challenge that means for a country of small geography and meagre economy to become involved in an event of universal dimensions, essentially with claims of cultural exchange and appreciation rather than profit. In fact between the ninth version, in 2006, and now the tenth, three years have passed by. But this temporal discrepancy does not affect the mood of their organizers as can be understood in the words of Rubén del Valle Lantarón, president of the National Council for Arts and Director of the event. He considers the tenth Biennial as "an opportunity to reflect on the paths taken until the present day and to measure the significance of the survival of a cultural encounter that overrides 'the crisis of the Biennials' global boom and the growing of the Fairs due to their higher commercial nature. 'Born as a "Biennale of the Third World," the event in Havana however had to adapt itself over the years to the global contingencies and the economic and political emerging configurations that expand today the contours of the "South" to make it penetrate even in the core of the First World, as a result of the extensive migrations and the growth of inequality that the neoliberal tide has brought about. Therefore, artists and countries, regions and cultures that were not invited years ago are now attending the event.

Global Age, Art Global, Global Theme... A characteristic feature of the Biennial of Havana is always to agree on a different, new theme around which to deploy calls and curatorial concepts for the next reunion. If the ninth Biennial's criteria were restricted to the so called "Public Art" and the procedures related to the deployment of art outside the traditional circuit of galleries and museums; a very inclusive motive was chosen for the tenth. Its scope suggests a wider diversity in the formal aspects and in its unprecedented thematic approaches. Speaking of Globalization and the Global Age today means to refer to the spread across the globe of production, ideology and political patterns, lifestyles and expression that previously were confined within the territorial borders of nations or in the frame of reference of different cultures and traditions. It also involves, of course, the expansion and influence of cultural patterns constructed in the predominant nuclei which are the bearers of technological advances and higher media coverage. But the reverse flow shouldn´t be discarded either, so it is the insidious and covert transportation of the cultural features of the periphery towards the privileged centres. Thus, when the tenth Biennial announced that its theme is Integration and resistance in the Global Age, is giving a chance to become at a time "a showcase exhibition, a vehicle of transfusion, a meeting point, a place of reflection and a transmission belt" of diverse artistic practices and potential topics that could describe all the contemporary period. So everyone who comes to Havana during the days of the Biennial may come across the most extensive links to debate, from art to the pressing problems of the present days. These might include: the redefinition of individual, national and local identities, ethnic groups and genders, the rereading of cultural processes and history, environmental emergencies, wars, global economic crisis, the impact of new technologies, the confrontation of popular imaginaries against the onslaught of media and entertainment industries empires, and a long etcetera.

The round of the "Special Guests" Structured into several "sections" that distinguish the different proposals, the Biennials of Havana usually set in each edition a range called "special guests" that brings together aces of the art world that agreed to be represented at the event, personally or through their work in solo exhibitions. If the meeting of 2006, the ninth, drew up an elitist list where the French architect Jean Nouvel, the American photographer Spencer Tunick, the Iranian video maker Shirin Neshat, among others were included, for the tenth, this chapter doesn´t seem to decrease in the reception of highlighted figures. What are the artists' names and exhibition places? Well, Colombian Fernell Franco, will exhibit in the Fototeca de Cuba, the Argentine Léon Ferrari, will deploy his works in Casa de las Americas, from Japan Shigeo Fukuda, the Chicano Guillermo Gomez Peña, the French-Canadian Hervé Fischer, the Uruguayan Louis Camnitzer and the South African Sue Williamsom, will exhibit in the Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wilfredo Lam (institution that organizes the Biennial), the Brazilian Paulo Brusckky will be located in the gallery Rubén Martínez Villena, and the Puerto Rican Pepón Osorio's contribution to the Biennial will be shown in a vehicle that will travel around the city. To refine the packaging of these stars, we will deploy a brief overview about each one of them?

The greater witness from Colombia: Fernell Franco The photographer considered the best in Colombia in the twentieth century died in January 2006. The show in memoriam that Havana offers now comes with the handicap of being curated by Maria Iovino, the author of Otro documento (Another document), a biography of this artist born in 1942. He brought up with seven siblings in a national context of bipartisan battles that forced the father to move the family from Cauca valley to the city of Cali. The violence that he saw in his childhood was decisive in the environment he chose to represent with his art at maturity. While working first as messenger and then as assistant employee in a photography studio he acquired the rudiments of the profession he would choose. In 1962 came the opportunity to work as photojournalist for the newspapers El País and Occidente and to get involved with the cultural movement of the city, which led to his transition towards experimental and artistic photography. His research on prostitution in Buenaventura became the series Prostitutas (Prostitutes), which would define in the 70's the beginning of his successful career as a documentary photographer. Later he worked on the series Interiores (Interiors). It was a look at the everyday life of the humble people, and in the early 80's, anguish and death were the main subjects of Amarrados (Tight up). With Billares (Caroms), Demoliciones (Demolitions) and Álbumes de la ciudad (Albums of the city), his vision extends to the evocation of neglected, decaying places and traditions of Cali. He was also linked to the world of film and the transmission of his knowledge through workshops. That brought him to Havana. In the Cuban capital he would get the prize of photography in the first Biennial. He received the Colombian Photography Award in 2001.

Leon Ferrari: One of the most controversial, according to NY Times The New York Times did not hesitate to describe this artist who was born at the beginning of the 1920's as "one of the world's five most provocative visual artists alive". Although today octogenarian, León Ferrari still causes amazement by declaring "I found the soul of Picasso in an atomizer" and who recently opened an exhibition named Poliuretano (Polyurethane) in which he makes industrial experiments with this material and says "God sent it to me". He meant it ironically, since his iconoclasm and insults against the Church are well known and reached their climax with the show of Infiernos e idolatrías (Hell and idolatries) 2000, which made him suffer virulent attacks by Catholic groups. Already in 1997 he had written a letter to the Pope asking for the abolition of the Judgment Day and the destruction of hell, and much earlier, in the 60's he motivated scandals with La Civilización Occidental y Cristiana (The Western and Christian civilization) a sculpture that showed Christ crucified on the wings of a U.S. warplane. This work, conceived as a way of protest against the Vietnam War, provided him of world fame and has been exhibited in New York during the administration of George W. Bush. Ferrari has refused to sell it, even with a lucrative offer from the Tate Modern in London. He said he regrets that art today is only "a way of dressing the image of money." However, his talent is so great that the Sao Paulo Biennial devoted a pavilion to his work. He also received the homage of Art Bassel Miami, and was voted best artist in the 52th edition of the International Art Biennale of Venice, where he obtained the "Golden Lion" award.

Things are not what they seem: Shigeo Fukuda If you hear of "El Ojo Salvaje", ("The Savage Eye"), "El Maestro de la Decepción" ("The Master of Deception") or "El Rey de la Ilusión" ("The King of Illusion") do not believe that they are titles or nicknames for Hollywood movie heroes. No, those are the adjectives that the incomparable Shigeo Fukuda got and that had exceeded his physical death. A heart failure stopped the clock of his life last January 11th at the age of 76. This prevented him from living the dream of seeing with own eyes his posters displayed all over Havana. But he will reach a tribute in Heaven and it will be the first one outside his country. Fukuda, who was the founder of the Japan Graphic Designers Association (JAGDA) and vice president of ICOGRADA, is considered an icon of universal design and the most universal among the Japanese designers in the last forty years. Selected in 1967 as the creator of the Japan Expo'70 Official Poster Competition and Gold Prize at the 1972 Warsaw International Poster Bienniale, he also achieved a worldwide reputation with his amorphous sculptures, true optical bluffs that at first glance seem masses of material, but when light projects them onto a wall they form suggestive figures. That is the case of the famous Lunch with a Helmet On, where a bundle of forks, knives and spoons, become a motorcycle by the magic of Fukuda. Such transfers from three-dimensional to bi-dimensional also formed boats, couples on the grass, men with bowler hats; though in the art of ambiguous illusions perhaps his most spectacular work is Duet, a sculpture that depending on the angle from which you see it, shows a violinist and a piano player.

Sue Williamson: Public Eye on South Africa "It's hard to do 'political art' (...) One is not making a 'statement', but is taking out something from the inside, and the way one does that, turns you into the process." This was expressed in 2001 by the founder of the artistic organization Public Eye, who now lives in Cape Town, South Africa, although born in Litchfield, England, in 1941. Formed in the late 60's at the Art Students League of New York, she has taken her work to the Johannesburg, Venice and Havana Biennials, and is also known for numerous books on contemporary South African art and as editor of the online magazine Artthrob. At the beginning of her career, she highlighted by A few South Africans, a set of prints that depicted prominent women in the struggle against racial or sexual discrimination. Later her work became interested in the document as an artistic and conceptual procedure that allows you to face the problem of identity (For thirty years next to his heart, 1990). Photography, passport books and personal objects are documentary elements used to build facilities to reconstruct the memory of the events in works such as The Last Supper and Out of the Ashes. A significant moment of his career was the participation in the collective exhibition The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994, exhibited at galleries in Germany and the United States during 2001-2002.

An artist-activist-archive man: Paulo Bruscky Network is not at all an invention of Digital era. The activation of nets as a "utopian model of the continuous expansive communication, using all expressive media and forms" (a concept of Eternal Network, created in 1963 by the Fluxus artist, Robert Filliou) had already its partisans in Latin America during the early 70's. One of these pioneers is Paulo Bruscky from Pernambuco, who joined the Mail Art International Movement in 1973 and organized in Brazil, 1975, the first international exhibition of this kind of art. By the use of Mail Art as a vehicle of freedom and transgression of censorship, Brucsky was in jail during the military dictatorship. Unquiet and experimental artist he is also recognized as one of the firsts in the artistic application of diverse technologies such as electronic recording, slides projection, facsimiles, super-8 films, video, off-set and mimeograph and also as forerunner of video art. A hunter of images and restless collector he counts on more than 75 thousand objects including the biggest Mail Art archive in the world. That´s why he has been regarded as an artist-activist-archivist man and his house caused such an impression on the curators of the 26th Sao Paulo Biennial that they decided to reproduce it completely in that mega exhibition. The Brazilian artist converted his private spaces in a monumental "installation" that unites "plastic charm", documentary vocation, work in progress character and conceptual craft. It is interpreted by the critics as an attempt of resistance against the institutionalization of the art system.

Performance of Mexterminator: Guillermo Gómez Peña Mix the artistic strategies of the New Millennium, derived from the application of new technologies, with the actionist trends that started in the 60's and 70's. Pour Spanish and English in appropriate doses to get the Spanglish. Add equal parts of pop culture and ethnocentrism, social reality and futuristic fiction. What's the result? Guillermo Gómez Peña, or as critics say -they even invented a label for his work-: "Chicano cyber-punk performance." He was born in 1955 in Mexico City but lives in the United States. In 1978 he said: "I am an artist from a neighbouring country that think about the new 'post-national Mexicans," his bittersweet relationship with the 'homeland' and its role in the formation of a virtual nation known as "Northern Latin America" within the United States. In Mexterminator, an interactive performance produced with the Chicano artist Roberto Sifuentes, he recreates a virtual tour through a museum of human beings who radiate some topics of ethnic minorities in North America. To create these "ethno-cyborgs", he used answers to questions he asked through Internet about language, art, sex, racism and immigration. With Iranian Ali Dadgar, he developed The Chica-Iranian Project, which warns about the dangers of facial features recognition softwares after 9-11. During the 2005 Arco Fair he introduced Post-México en X-Paña, a combination of performance, installation, photography and projection of videograffitis. It is ironic about the historic debt of Spain with America and the Middle East and the country's underestimation of immigrant communities.

Hervé Fischer: The Prometheus of Digital Age Some accuse Ciberprometeo´s author of some exaggerated optimism with the Digital Age, but those who read carefully his Digital Shock and repair on his notion of "critical fascination," will find out that Hervé Fischer is neither apocalyptic nor integrated. In his analysis he seeks for an objective balance of the threats and opportunities that technological advancements offer. Not in vain he said: "I declare a state of emergency to develop a cyber-philosophy. We're running backwards. Techno-science is faster than our conscience and our ideas, and that puts us in a great danger." This French-Canadian has achieved so much success with his books that Wikipedia defines him as a "writer." Although in reality he is an extremely versatile man, a graduate of Philosophy and Sociology, founder of the movement of "Sociological Art" in 1971, president of the International Federation of Multimedia, first one in placing his books for free download on the Web; and pioneer of digital art creations in computer animation. This prophet of the new era has predicted The decline of the Hollywood Empire, the last of his essays, published in Cuba after Fischer's participation in the Festival de Cine Pobre in Gibara, 2008. Guest artist at the Venice Biennale (1976), at the Biennial of São Paulo (1981) and in Documenta in Kassel (1982), he was in Havana during the 2006 Biennial, invited to the theoretical event. His return is, in the tenth, to present a personal exhibition entitled "The paradoxical return to painting in the Digital Age."

Art with Ethics? Luis Camnitzer "Unfortunately the only thing you have left is ethics." "You explain and I do not understand your dogma." "Unfortunately I have bullets, but it shouldn't." "You have the bullets and I die." These were titles Luis Camnitzer gave to some of his conceptualist works. Facing the art-trade dilemma, he said he uses as weapon a moral structure he called "ethical cynicism" and "the essence of this position is based on the idea of aware prostitution being better than to prostitute oneself unconsciously. In the first case it means a strategy, in the second case it means corruption. "This is the thesis he argues in the essay Corruption in Art / Art of Corruption, which also makes an interesting assessment on the Havana Biennials. Recognized as one of the most distinguished conceptual artist in Latin America, through his theoretical production he has also contributed to the spread of this trend, with books like Didactics of Liberation: a document that places the evolution of conceptualism in the sub-continent in its relationship with Latin American history. There it would not be a "style" but a strategy in response to political conditions. Camnitzer was born in Germany and immigrated as a child to Uruguay, he returned to Germany to study, later he went to the United States with a Guggenheim fellowship, and returned to Uruguay in 1969. But then he had to leave again because he was part of the dictatorship's black list. Again in the U.S. he got married, had children, and stayed. Although he confesses: "My neighbourhood, however, is still Pocitos, in Montevideo, and my audience are the Uruguay in the 50's. Since the audience no longer exists, I guess I don't exist either. "

Pepón Osorio: Artists do not cry... The artist was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico in 1955. He came to the sixth Biennial of Havana in 1997, planted a stylist chair at the Wilfredo Lam Center and entitled the gesture En la barbería no se llora (You can't cry in the barbershop). Pepón Osorio often uses objects from industrial provenance, they do not come out of his "hands of artist", but he has great talent for selection, relocation and reconstruction of these objects to the point of giving them qualities of artworks. He is inspired by the ready made, but he goes beyond it, with installations such as The Chandelier, in which one of the lamps placed on the roof is full of "sweets", prints of saints, dolls, plastic flowers and ribbons. Through these items and holiday decorations, considered banal and non-artistic, he is however rebuilding a site of tradition and popular culture of the Puerto Rican community, and making an artefact that is at once a tribute to his nation of origin and a handle to his own memory -Osorio moved to New York since 1975, where he made a Master in Sociology and lived with Latino immigrants in the humble neighbourhood of Bronx-. He exhibited repeatedly in galleries in America and Paris; he participated in the Sao Paulo Biennale in 2006 and he is also recognized by pieces like Badge of Honour (Insignia de honor), which reproduced two sceneries that are juxtaposed in the art work but separate in reality: the cell where a father spends his years in prison and the room of his teenager son with a video player that screens both characters in their respective environments. The Puerto Rican artist shows great sensitivity with his work and gives a deep message about the external forces that conspire against harmony in family relationships.

Alexandre Arrechea's first solo Biennial He just participated in Arco 2009 with the project Vivir debajo de un puente (To live under a bridge) and he was in the Prospect.1 New Orleans' Biennial with Mississippi Bucket, a reminder of the tragedy experienced by the city during the hurricane Katrina. Since he became former member of the group Los Carpinteros, he has produced pieces like Sudor (Sweat) 2004, where the simulation of a sporting show turns into a metaphor for the transfer of an action in real existence to its virtual substitutes. He also made Entrada Libre para siempre (Free entrance forever) 2006, a reproduction of men submitted to uniformities in their disciplined access to stadiums. "Esculturas Sociales" ("Social Sculptures") is the classification for some of his works; some others like El Jardín de la desconfianza (The garden of distrust) and Conspiracy refers the paranoia of the individual and the loss of control over his life when he becomes gear of a machinery at the service of a certain power. Since Arrechea´s artistic proposals try to elucidate global problems and to expand the limits of the prevailing discourses of new Cuban art, it's been really easy for him to tune in to the thematic axis of this tenth Biennial. For his first solo show in this event he's going to bring La habitación de todos (Everyone's room), a mechanic craft that suffers modifications according to the Dow Jones index fluctuations. That establishes synchronic interrelations between the context of the biennial and the circumstances of the world economical crisis. Asked about the significance of the event, he answered: "It'll be a good moment to test our capacity to reinvent ourselves." Aside from his exhibition in the fortress La Cabaña, he was also invited by Tania Bruguera to participate in the workshops of the Cátedra Arte de Conducta.

Fernando Rodríguez, from the National Museum to the Global Gallery By the end of 2007, Fernando Rodríguez Falcón presented for the first time at the Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales de La Habana a 3D animated film entitled Mandarria y Matraca. Una visita al nuevo museo de arte tropical. This likeable representation of the artist-institution conflictive relationship, embodied in a cat's escape after being intimidated by a dog happened inside the walls of a museum; and Fernando used the occasion to homage and parody several emblematic Cuban works and artists of the last two decades. Now, in Render Global, a piece with which he will participate as guest artist in the tenth Biennial, he comes up again with the appropriation, although this time he will refer to the universal artistic legacy. He manipulated photographs of representative pieces of contemporary artist such as Takashi Murakami, Maurizio Cattelan, Damien Hirst, among others, and inserts recognized national icons. With the ten graphics that make this series, Fernando inverts the appropriation process, as he says: "Every artist wants his work to be universal and I make these universal artists become local ones." Through this strategy he discourses also, implicitly, on the concerns artists have about how to be part of the current art scene and what to do facing the advent of new media technology. A matter that in Fernando Rodríguez Falcón's career is being solved in the transition to digital art and the abandonment of Francisco de la Cal, this alter ego character with rural roots, who characterized the first stage of his artistic path.

Between the Mirage and the New World: Humberto Diaz Collateral to the Havana Biennial of 2006, Humberto Diaz made an intervention at the courtyard of the San Alejandro Academy to create the poignant landscape of a flood. He entitled the work Espejismo (Mirage). With the piece Vacío (Vacuum) 2007, he joined the artists of Cero, a collective show exhibited in the Convent San Francisco de Asis, and he participated with Reversible in Espacios Multiplicados, exhibition with which the Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales reopened in June of the same year. Later, during a stay in the United Kingdom, Humberto presented a series of performances under the name Solo at the Liverpool Hope University. The image of contemporary society as a desert where the main rulers are isolation, non-communication and lack of meaning, is conceptually defining the recent work of Humberto Diaz. However, his involvement in the tenth Biennial will be on board a collective project, which from its title: Tales from the New World (Relatos del Nuevo Mundo), to its purpose: to propitiate the reunion in Havana of the work of thirteen artists from different parts of the globe, promises us a not at all bleak panorama. As general coordinator (he doesn't want to be considered curator), Humberto Diaz has said it will be "a look at the phenomenon of globalization", understood as the possibility of a "dialogue between the first world artists and their Cuban counterparts." The show will take place in Pabellón Cuba and the guests are Gayle Chong Kwan, Stan Douglas, Luis Gómez, Lin Holland & Dave Lewis, Geoff Molyneux, Wilfredo Prieto, Margaretha Schöning, Alexander Guerra, María Victoria Portell, Benjamin Washington, Satomi Matobo and Humberto Díaz himself.

Wisdom of a peasant at the Biennial These were Juan Carlos Fernandez's words in an interview: "A peasant's wisdom is to grow the land in order to feed his family. An artist's wisdom is to cultivate him self to feed his work". And La cosecha (The harvest) is the piece that this artist, born in Pinar del Río province, will bring to the tenth Bienal. He describes it as "a return to his origins", as an episode of the homesickness for his childhood's country town in San José del Batey de Sanchez. It consists of five huge installations with representative objects of the rural life such as the Cuban stool, and that are part of a project that he's been thinking about since 2003 and started working on by 2007 for the residency PERRO (Propuesta Experimental de Respuesta Rápida Organizada) and for Sandra Ceballos's Espacio Aglutinador. The work of Juan Carlos Fernandez dialogs with the main theme of the tenth Biennial due to its condition of image of the periphery and the identities and ways of life submerged in the homogeneous globalizing tide. Fort the first time in the principal list of national guests to this event, Juan Carlos had already taken part in parallel shows in the eight Biennial with the collective exhibition Sed (Thirst) and Contando a la izquierda (Counting to the left) and in the ninth with the collective Jet-Lag, the solo show Life Line-Time and the intervention in Red de Bienal.

About MP3, letters, blood and "the teach" Rolando Vázquez Rolando Vázquez participated as a sculptor in a collective intervention called Las dinámicas de un viaje (The Dynamics of a trip) that took place in La Coubre train station during the Biennial of 2006. For the tenth Havana Biennial, the professor of the Academia de San Alejandro brings two proposals on the agenda of the collateral shows. One is a solo exhibition at the Havana headquarters of the SGAE (General Society of Spanish Authors and Publishers) that introduces him as a photographer of anthropological concerns. Under the title MP3, the series consists of 16 photographs mounted on corroded metal frames. It exhibits Cubans of different races and genre, social and cultural levels, and each work will be accompanied by a music player where the viewer can hear the kind of melody that the character prefers. He invites us to a game of riddles that tests the viewer's knowledge about their surrounding reality. Will we be able to predict the taste of the photographed persons through their faces, their attitudes and their dressing habits? The second work's name is Pasillo Negro (Black Hall) and it is an initiative of the pedagogic artistic project Cascarilla where students from San Alejandro will build a tunnel that will unify several classrooms of the Academy. It will function as a gallery within which students and teachers will exhibit some of their works. The involvement of Rolando Vazquez will be with an installation that recreates an old popular saying together wit the image of the sacrifice of a ram over the school desks. This will provide thoughts about power relations in the context of education.

Expressionist cocktail: Servando, Eiriz, Tomás Sánchez Servando Cabrera Moreno has been honoured in Cuba since May 2008 because of the 85th anniversary of his birth; undoubtedly Antonia Eiriz also deserves to be commemorated in her 80th birthday and Tomás Sánchez received the Amelia Peláez National Award of Painting just a quarter-century ago precisely at the first Havana Biennial. These reasons seem sufficient to open a space for these three important figures of the Cuban visual arts world in the tenth Biennial 2009. But there are also a couple of reasons to gather them in the same area: first, their friendship, their sincere admiration and their transfer of influences; and second, the coincidence that at some point in their careers, the three of them entered the Expressionist figuration. That's why, the Museum Library Servando Cabrera Moreno has organized La conciencia del testigo (The awareness of the witness), which involves a sample of 50 pieces created by the trio of undisputed masters. For such a colossal event the curators had to appeal to the funds of the organizing institution as well as to the collections of the National Museum of Fine Arts, the Museo Municipal of San Miguel del Padrón and the contribution of private collectors. Among the collateral exhibitions, its opening is scheduled for March 19th, several days before the beginning of the Tenth Biennial.

The Biennial's Historical Center (I) The oldest area of the Cuban capital and the cultural institutions that it houses, managed by the Oficina del Historiador de la Ciudad (Office of the Historian of the City) will not lose the opportunity to join the massive celebration of contemporary visual arts which is the tenth Biennial. In addition of the fortress of San Carlos de la Cabaña, which is assigned to receive the bulk of the guests' works, others of its privileged spaces will house exhibitions of the official program. At the Convent of San Francisco de Asís will be Punto de Encuentro (Meeting point), a collective project organized by Alexis Leyva "Kcho" and that will bring prominent figures like Shirin Neshat and Peter Nadin; and Bisagra (Hinge) a show of Mexican artists around the theme of violence. China, contemporary art magazine; the proposal of Chinablue Gallery of Beijing combines the work of six contemporary artists, will take place in the Center of Hispano-American Culture. As a guest, the Brazilian Paulo Bruscky, will exhibit at the Public Library Gallery Rubén Martínez Villena. There will be many other shows, already considered collaterals, which promise to be interesting, for example, Dubai, 2015, with Jairo Alfonso, Walter Velazquez, Anthony G. Margolles and Ernesto Leal, in the Simón Bolívar House, and Babel in the O'Farril Hotel, where Javier Guerra presents a series of assemblies and Rene Rodriguez puts on view some photographs on light boxes. Mabel Llevat's photographic project El Encanto is exhibited at the Ambos Mundos Hotel and it's a look at the past with the issue of racial and gender discrimination.

The Biennial's Historical Center (II) Other two collaterals and an individual show will call the viewers' attention for sure. They are El patriota invisible (The invisible patriot) by Reinier Leyva, who returns to his inquiry about the homeland's history after two of its symbols: the National Hymn and the National Flower at the Colonial Art Museum; and Domesticaciones, by Marianela Orozco, a young Cuban artist with an ascending work who penetrates the troubled relations between men and context and the strategies of domination in the Simón Bolívar House. Among the collective exhibitions highlights Glamour de Occidente (Glamour from the West) in the Benito Juárez House, involving Vera Irving, Adonis Flores, Abel Barroso, Marianela Orozco, Ernesto Javier Fernandez, Manuel Piña, Rene Rodríguez, Yornel Martínez, Sandra Ramos, Deborah Nofret, Raúl Cordero, Carlos Montes de Oca, Elizabeth Cerviño, Aimee Garcia, Yoan Capote and Nadal Antelmo, in an approach to the world of fashion. There will be also, the review of the Digital Art competitions that the Cultural Center Pablo de la Torriente Brau makes, in the building it shares with the Casa de la Poesía (House of Poetry.) Meanwhile, among what arrives from latitudes distant from Havana, we announce Lo asiático, lo cubano y lo japonés, (The Asian, the Cuban and the Japanese) installations by the Japanese artists Hideo Iwasaki, Shigeyo Ryuzo Kobayashi and Kawano, who join in their works features of the Cuban and Japanese cultures. They will be placed at the Asian House. From Switzerland to the Florida Hotel will travel La caja fuerte (The Safe), by Martin Engler, a sample of fifteen chalcographys and an installation which returns to a very fashionable topic: the global financial crisis. The latest invitation points to the future, since it is the educational workshop called Taller Nuevas Fieras conducted by Rocio Garcia in the San Alejandro Academy, which will exhibit in the Oswaldo Guayasamín House works of students together with renowned Cuban artist.