What with all the exposure of downtown’s high-profile museums–art, children’s, history–it’s easy to take for granted a key contributor over the years: the USF Contemporary Art Museum. And ditto for Noel Smith, USF CAM’s cutting-edge curator of Latin American and Caribbean art, who in the last dozen years has used the medium of art to become a player in the ongoing contretemps that is Cuba-Florida–and Havana-Tampa–reality.
My wife and I recently sampled the latest exhibition, “Occupying, Building, Thinking: Poetic and Discursive Perspectives on Contemporary Cuban Video Art (1990-2010).” The two-month exhibit, which ended last Saturday, didn’t disappoint. It was as intended: evocative and provocative, 22 video variations on themes of loss, hope, determination, impermanence, nostalgia and political cynicism. Empathy happens.
I was particularly captivated by a video that featured a series of red heavy (boxing) bags, hanging in a queue under an overpass near local street people. Each one was emblazoned with a political visage, including those of Mahmoud Amadinejad, Hugo Chavez, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Fidel Castro and Karl Marx. Ultimately, they were used for their pugilistic purpose. Punches were landed. Ideology seemingly played no favorites.
“I think it portrays the general cynicism toward politicians,” states Smith, whose interest in matters Cuban dates to two uncles who were prominent, Cuba-based executives of the Lykes Bros. Steamship Co. She is also fluent and translator-savvy in Spanish.
The Cuban connection is a perfect fit, says Smith, who partnered with Miami-based curator Dennys Matos to bring the exhibit here.
“Our mission is to bring the best in contemporary visual art here,” she explains. “And contemporary Cuban art is really good art. It’s good in content and technique. It fits in our mission. And there’s our amazing heritage with Cuba. We’re helping keep this relationship going.”
The videos were complemented by gallery ambience reminiscent of a vintage Cuban living room, circa 1950s. Accompanying copies of the official party newspaper Granma, while historic anomalies, were a bonus look at contemporary government perspectives, priorities and propaganda. The one from May 22, 2013 was illustrative.
It prominently featured a front-page account of Cuba’s first live-donor kidney transplant (in Holguin) and a schadenfreudian look at poverty growth (64 percent in 10 years) in U.S. suburbs–that included a notable reference to 28 percent of Miami inhabitants living “under the shadow of poverty.” It also flashed back to October 1963 to recall President John F. Kennedy’s interview with French journalist Jean Daniel Bensaid of L’Express in which Kennedy reflected on the U.S. being responsible, in effect, for the Batista dictatorship and consequent island ills of the 1950s.
And, yes, the sports page is still a Granma staple.
Next Exhibit
USF CAM’s next exhibition will be “SubRosa: The Language of Resistance,” a combination of video, drawing, painting, sculpture, photography and installation that will deal with conditions of oppression and run from Aug. 26 to Dec. 7. The artists are from Cuba, China, South Africa, Iran, Palestine and Equatorial Guinea.