Radical Conventions: Cuban American Art from the 1980s

photograph of a man shirtless from the back leaning into a car photograph of a man shirtless from the back leaning into a car
Luis Medina
Untitled, Montrose Harbor, 1984
Color cibachrome print
14 x 11 in.
painting by luis cruz azaceta of cityscape with animals painting by luis cruz azaceta of cityscape with animals

Luis Cruz Azaceta
City Painter of Hearts, 1981
Oil on canvas
72 x 120 in. (diptych)

image of a woman black and white photo image of a woman black and white photo

J. Tomás López
Sugar Kane 1, 1989-91
Carbon pigment print
15 x 15 in.

image of a room with a baby doll lying on the ground half into a doorway with fish sculptures swimming into the wall image of a room with a baby doll lying on the ground half into a doorway with fish sculptures swimming into the wall

SILVIA LIZAMA
Adventures of Phillip With Fish, 1987
Hand-colored gelatin silver print
15 x 15 in.

black and white photograph of woman dancing black and white photograph of woman dancing
Carmelita Tropicana
Cement Beach, 1988
Photo-documentation of performance at PS 122, New York
Gelatin silver print
20 x 16 in.
Photo by Dona Ann McAdams
March 17 – June 12, 2022

By the 1980s, the first waves of Cuban exiles who migrated to South Florida in the previous two decades had begun to establish themselves as an economic force with increasing political power. In the process they developed an ideological narrative around which the community could rally; that is, to liberate Cuba from communism. This thinking not only informed their political and social aspirations, but also helped to cement an image of Cuban Americans as largely conservative. It is against this late Cold War backdrop that one can locate the genesis of Cuban American art and around which this exhibition aims to frame the creative production of the artists represented.  

Radical Conventions is not a survey exhibition; it does not attempt to paint a comprehensive picture of the cultural production of Cuban-born artists living and working in the US during the 1980s. Instead, it provides a counter-narrative to the prevailing discourse on Cuban American art (which tends to examine this material through the reductive lens of exile and displacement) and locates the cultural formation and artistic practice of its featured artists in nuanced social and political contexts. By dispensing with the more typical binary-identity focused approach, the works reveal the impact of other identities. Beyond biculturalism, issues related to sexuality, gender, religion, class, and political positionings—especially vis-à-vis Cuba and Cuba/US relations—are addressed within the wider aesthetic frameworks of the American avant-garde of the late 1970s and 1980s. Radical Conventions also places the works on view in dialogue with the most pressing issues of this pivotal decade: HIV/AIDS, identity politics, culture wars, postmodernism, Mariel, and Reagan-era conservatism.  

​​Although these practitioners worked largely within the conventional parameters of contemporary art, their radicality resides in the culturally specific ways in which they engaged with artistic norms, often broadening and challenging pictorial and conceptual frameworks associated with painting, drawing, photography, video, and performance art. Some turned to the visual language of Neo-Expressionism, Surrealism, and Magic Realism, in line with the resurgence of figuration that defined the visual arts from this period. Others relied on parody, humor, and a deconstructive tendency aligned with the Postmodernist discourse that dominated the cultural production of the 1980s.   

Radical Conventions and its accompanying catalogue make important contributions to the critical literature on Cuban American and Latinx art and challenges what defines “American Art” more broadly. 

 Curated by Elizabeth Cerejido, PhD 

Esperanza Bravo de Varona Chair, Cuban Heritage Collection


Radical Conventions is presented in collaboration with the Cuban Heritage Collection of the University of Miami Libraries. The exhibition is made possible due to generous support by the Knight Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jorge M. Pérez Family Foundation, Funding Arts Network, American Alliance of Museums, Florida Department of State Division of Arts & Culture, Miami Dade County, the City of Coral Gables, The Cowles Charitable Trust, and The Arnold and August Newman Foundation.

 

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