Sin Autorización: Contemporary Cuban Art

Sin Autorización: Contemporary Cuban Art contextualizes Cuban contemporary art production within the political and intellectual environment that emerged during President Obama’s second term and its many changes in the years following. It is set against the last few decades, which saw the dynamic rise of the political and cultural agency of Cuban artists, the emergence of unofficial “underground” exhibition spaces and practices, and surges of tourism and foreign interest in Cuban art.

Sin Autorización (Without Authorization) features artists connected to each other through a network of personal ties and connections. Their works span a variety of forms and concepts, employ archival sources, performance, documentation and action, and expose nuances of daily life in Cuba not reflected in official discourse. Together they relay how a young generation of Cuban artists experiment with culture and create work that engages not only their current experience, but that of previous generations.

The exhibition gathers a group of artists who have united to fight against the Cuban government collectively through movements such as 27N or Movimiento San Isidro, but who have had little visibility individually, and whose artistic work precedes activism. It covers a wide spectrum of media—video, sound, photography, graphic design, and painting—in order to create a chorus that recreates the dynamic of an art community now displaced and scattered. It is conceived as an artifact to create solidarity through the feeling of loss by bringing together grief, melancholy, but also joy, enthusiasm, play, hope, and thoughtful objects. 

Contributing artists include Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, Yanelys Nuñez Leyva, Tania Bruguera, and Movimiento San Isidro whose work reflects the potency of artistic exchange in Cuba even as institutions continue to fail artists; members of the youngest generation of Cuban artists—Julio Llópiz-Casal, Hamlet Lavastida, Leandro Feal, and Kiko Faxas—whose work counters the rigid orthodoxy of the revolution and fills the voids of silence, and Marco A. Castillo, Reynier Leyva Novo, Camila Lobón, Lester Álvarez Meno, Celia González, Celia-Yunior, Kevin Ávila, Román Gutiérrez Aragoneses, and Santiago Díaz M.

The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual publication designed by Lucinda Hitchcock and Cara Buzzell with contributions from the curators, Katherine Bisquet, Carlos Manuel Álvarez, GeanMoreno, and Yanelys Nuñez Leyva.

Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery
Lenfest Center for the Arts
615 West 129th Street
New York, NY 10027

https://wallach.columbia.edu/