August invites you to visit Havana’s galleries
During these days of August, several exhibitions invite visitors to visit Havana’s galleries, where art is presented in its various techniques. One of them is the collective exhibition dedicated to Marta Arjona on the centenary of her birth, which opened on Wednesday at the Wifredo Lam Gallery in the capital’s Marianao neighborhood.
La imagen olvidada (The Forgotten Image) is the title of another collective exhibition that will be on display from August 11 to September 2 at the Provincial Center for Plastic Arts and Design -Gallery on Luz y Oficios- in Old Havana. The work is a leitmotif of diverse stories told through the visual creations of a group of self-taught artists who make art their social and cognitive epicenter. Some of them are Enrique Alfonso, Ángel Michel Castellanos, Sandra Rossi Brito, Amanda de la Torre, Adriana Toirac Barrabia, Olivia Solano Rodríguez, among others.
The fabulous, religiosity, mysticism, women, the real, the miraculous, everyday life and the undeniable truths that surround us are some of the themes of the exhibited works, which seek a palpable cosmogony in their creative psyche, as highlighted in the catalog by art historian Alay Fuentes Bejerano.
This Friday, the exhibitions Germinando by Dania Navarro Podadera and Con nombre propio by Teresa de Jesús Borges will open their doors at the gallery in the historic center.
About the first exhibition, curator María Teresa González points out that it is a sample of the different techniques and media used by the artist: painting, sculpture, installations and collage. The surrealism of these presentations is usually self-referential and her image can be transfigured through individuals of different sexes, objects, animals, from a symbolic and sometimes experimental approach.
Dania Navarro Podadera is a true exponent of Art Brut in Cuba. The term comes from the Frenchman Jean Dubuffet, who found creative thinking in people suffering from mental or genetic disorders. The artist never writes titles, she just creates, and she cannot control it, because she is relieved by the accumulation of images in her head and they give meaning to her daily life. Her works are the reflection of a pure, genuine everyday life; the result of a sincere, instinctive and impartial intuition that dignifies her self-taught training. For Dania, art is an attitude to life.
Con nombre propio, by Teresa de Jesús Borges, is the reflection of a pure creativity – which cannot be annulled – without pretension or contamination, in which her personal imprint reigns and starts a dialogue. According to Evelio Pérez Morejón, the artist’s life experience, contextualized in a significant historical event, is what gives meaning to this curatorial exhibition.
With a surrealist gaze, she transfers her images to the world of art through a free mental association, without the censorship of conscience. Her drawings, spontaneous, direct and intuitive technique, make reality, a transformation of the everyday, in supernatural experiences, emphasizes the curator Evelio Pérez Morejón.
María Teresa González told Radio Enciclopedia that La Moderna Gallery, located in the Centro Habana neighborhood, celebrates its twelfth anniversary this Friday with the exhibition Entelequia, imaginación inexplicable by Vladimir Martínez Ávila.
Translated by Luis E. Amador Dominguez
