Michel Mirabal, Alejandro Pérez and Frank Fernández in Éxodo: Causas y Consecuencias

Rarely has the theater of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana been filled with fear, and this Tuesday it was in the air following the presentation of a video art entitled Éxodo: Causas y Consecuencias (Exodus: Causes and Consequences).

The premiere of the video, which is part of the exhibition Arquitectura de un sistema (Architecture of a System) by the artist Michel Mirabal, was projected on the screens of this hall. The exhibition will be held at the Loredan Palace in Venice, one of the venues for the Architecture Biennale to be held in the Italian city in 2023.

It is a six-minute material created by three artists: the aforementioned Mirabal, maestro Frank Fernández for the music and film, and television and video director Alejandro Pérez, who is responsible for the audiovisual direction.

The theme of the project is the phenomenon of migration in today’s world, a problem that, as Frank Fernández said, «affects us all.»

The way the problem is treated in this production is strong, but this energy is not conceived as an artistic stimulus, rather it is orchestrated under the harsh reality of migration in Cuba and the world today.

Gunshots, harsh photographs, black and white clips, shrill sounds, Michel Mirabal spilling paint on passports and ants moving on a map of the world are sequences that are constantly repeated in this multimedia work.

The creation of this video art is undoubtedly masterful, bringing together three great artists from the fields of visual arts, music and cinema. The protagonists of this production claim that the communication was very clear to them, as the aim was to make art in the midst of three of their manifestations.

The prestigious creators also stated that the main objective of this mini-documentary is to make a strong denunciation, to send a message of awareness to the world about a global problem; for this reason it is planned to present it in numerous cities around the world, in addition to Venice.