Queloides is on view at the Rudenstine Gallery at Harvard University until May 30th, 2012. For more info, visit site.
PREVIOUSLY ON VIEW APRIL 12th-JULY 21st AT THE 8TH FLOOR
Queloides is part of ¡Sí Cuba! Festival, a New York celebration of Cuban arts and culture. For the complete line-up of ¡Sí Cuba! Festival events, please visit SiCuba.org.
¡Sí Cuba! A New York celebration of Cuban arts and culture. March–June 2011
From March to June, fourteen New York institutions convene to celebrate the rich artistic vitality of Cuba, presenting ¡Sí Cuba!, a festival showcasing the diversity of Cuban culture from the traditional to the modern. Join us for screenings of award-winning films; lively concerts of son, rumba, hip-hop, and more by musical legends and rising stars; intimate discussions with Cuban writers, musicians, and thinkers; dance performances, from the classical to contemporary; compelling visual art exhibitions; and more as we discover the creative spirit of Cuba in forms both old and new.
Curators: Alejandro de la Fuente and Elio Rodriguez Valdés
The 8th Floor is pleased to announce Queloides: Race and Racism in Cuban Contemporary Art, an exhibition protesting the resurgence of racism in Cuba. This exhibition is part of a citywide festival of Cuban art and culture called Sí Cuba!
Alexis Esquivel, Smile You Won! 2010. Acrylic on canvas.
The thirteen artists featured in Queloides—Pedro Álvarez, Manuel Arenas, Belkis Ayón, María Magdelena Campos-Pons, Roberto Diago, Alexis Esquivel, Armando Mariño, René Peña, Marta María Pérez Bravo, Roberto Diago, Doulgas Pérez, Elio Rodriguez, Meira Marrero and José Toirac—offer a revisionist, critical reading of the history of Cuba that highlights the contributions of the Africans and their descendants to the formation of the Americas in general, and the Cuban nation in particular.
René Peña, Black Marat, 2009. Digital Inkjet Print.
The concept of Queloides has evolved since it was shown at the Wifredo Lam Center for Contemporary Art in Cuba and most recently at the Mattress Factory museum in Pittsburgh, however it builds on an ongoing project that began in Havana in 1997. Started by a group of artists and intellectuals, the project is a statement by a generation, exposing increasingly racist attitudes in a society that maintains racial equality as part of the official discourse. The current iteration, which is curated by Alejandro de la Fuente and Elio Rodriguez, is a collaborative project between the Mattress Factory museum and the University of Pittsburgh’s Center of Latin American Studies.
The 8th Floor welcomes this exhibit to the New York metro area, home to the second largest Cuban population living off the island.
Artists include:
Pedro Álvarez, Manuel Arenas, Belkis Ayón, María Magdelena Campos-Pons, Roberto Diago, Alexis Esquivel, Armando Mariño, René Peña, Marta María Perez Bravo, Douglas Pérez, Elio Rodriguez, Meira Marrero and José A. Toirac.
Queloides has been exhibited at the Centro de Cultura Contemporánea Wifredo Lam (Havana, April 16- May 31, 2010) and at the Mattress Factory museum, Pittsburgh (October 15, 2010-February 27, 2011).
Queloides: Race and Racism in Cuban Contemporary Art was made possible by generous support from the Christopher Reynolds Foundation, Inc., Atlantic Philanthropies, Ford Foundation, Lambent Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Humanities Council, The Pittsburgh Foundation, and the University of Pittsburgh’s CRDF, CLAS, UCIS, Humanities Center, World History Center and the Dean of Arts and Sciences.
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