[vc_row][vc_column][vc_media_grid grid_id=”vc_gid:1533806465014-9fa23910-6976-8″ include=”101950,101948,101949,101952,101947,101951″][vc_column_text]To an outsider, the most startling part of artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara’s arrest on 21 July for attempting to protest on the Capitol steps in Havana was the passivity, bordering on fearful ignorance, of his fellow Cubans at the scene. When he shouted and resisted, there was no response. When officers forced his head back to get him into the car, no one batted an eye.
Such is a reality Otero Alcántara and Yanelyz Nuñez, founders of the 2018 Index award-winning Museum of Dissidence, and the independent art community are working to change for the millions of Cubans whose freedom of expression remains severely constrained in the post-Castro era. Describing the challenges modern Cuba faces, Alcántara and Nuñez said “there are two political extremes that fail to dialogue and, in the background, that people are confused, apathetic, saturated with politics, and repressed by fear.”
As Index fellowships and advocacy officer Perla Hinojosa says, “When your freedoms are limited for so long, it becomes natural that when you try to express yourself in a different manner, you are stopped by authorities, so I’m assuming that the Cuban people are desensitised.”
By covering themselves in excrement and demanding “free art,” the artists planned to emphasise that “independent artists are shit for the Cuban state” as Otero Alcántara said after two days’ imprisonment and beatings. He added that they are portrayed as dissidents and lack a platform to engage with the public, much less the government, on legislation like Decree 349, a harsh new law allowing the government to sanction what art can be displayed or exchanged in private settings. Otero Alcántara believes it is “a very clear response” to the Museum of Dissidence’s independent art biennial, held in May despite government attempts to derail it.
While only Nuñez could carry out the protest and demand a meeting with the minister of culture regarding Decree 349, in its aftermath, the artists catalysed a movement of peaceful resistance, digital campaigning and public dialogue to draw national attention to the law and culture of artistic censorship in Cuba. Nuñez, Otero Alcántara and Amaury Pacheco and Iris Ruiz, who were also arrested, have taken the protest to social media, using the hashtags #NOALDECRETOLEY349 (#NOTODECREELAW349) and #artelibre (#freeart) on their Facebook page representing Cuba’s independent artists.
Pacheco is assembling a gallery of Cuban and international artists endorsing the campaign’s phrase: “together we can… no to Decree 349, the law that converts art into a crime.” Featured visual and performing artists like Damián Valdéz Dilla and René Rodríguez tell Cubans that “you are stronger than you think” and “don’t count the days… make sure your days count.” Such messages serve to invigorate a nation with a culture deeply rooted in the suppression of unsanctioned ideas. In his profile, Otero Alcántara encourages the public to “dream when reality tires us, to return to reality when dreaming tires us.”
Hinojosa believes “that this work embodies what meaningful activism against censorship looks like. You can be arrested and threatened but you know you have rights and are willing to stand up for them. They are creating dialogue around the issue for the betterment of themselves and their communities.”
Apart from digital activism, the artists are hosting a public debate in the first week of August. The participating independent artists and journalists have raised concerns that Decree 349 offers a “large margin of action for Cuban censors.” Their objective is to include artists from Cuba and the international community in the conversation and propose a cultural policy that is more considerate of artistic expression. Alcántara and Nuñez believe that “We belong to a generation that wants urgent improvements. A generation that, although it has no political culture, knows what it wants.”
Hinojosa says “Index aims to amplify fellows’ work so that it doesn’t go unseen and provide international support for their activism. This is essential to pressure the government and create dialogue with the community, to tell the Cuban people that it is important to speak out.”
Do you agree with the Museum of Dissidence that artists in Cuba should not be criminalised for their work? If so, please sign their petition against Decree 349.[/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/-6JnYDCLKIE”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/4″][vc_column_text]
Index encourages an environment in which artists and arts organisations can challenge the status quo, speak out on sensitive issues and tackle taboos.
Index currently runs workshops in the UK, publishes case studies about artistic censorship, and has produced guidance for artists on laws related to artistic freedom in England and Wales.
Index works with the winners of the Freedom of Expression Awards Fellowship to help them achieve goals through a 12-month programme of capacity building, coaching and strategic support.
Through the fellowships, Index seeks to maximise the impact and sustainability of voices at the forefront of pushing back censorship worldwide.
Learn more about the Freedom of Expression Awards Fellowship.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ style=”load-more” items_per_page=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1533806465027-3ff50ed2-b280-7″ taxonomies=”7874, 23772″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Update: Since publishing this article, Index on Censorship has been informed that Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara has also been released, having spent two nights in prison. He said that during hisdetention he was hit so hard “as if to break the spine“.
The plan was clear: cover yourself with excrement, hold a sign demanding “Free art. No to decree 349” and be visible. But on the afternoon of Saturday 21 July, only Yanelyz Nuñez stood on the steps of the National Capitol Building in Havana, her body smeared with human faeces and her eyebrows furrowed in anger over the arrest of her colleagues for protesting against new legislation restricting the private display of art without government approval. The law threatens fines, raids and the loss of licenses for self-employed workers who solicit artists that lack approval from the Ministry of Culture.
Among those arrested for protesting were artists Amaury Pacheco, Soandry del Río, Iris Ruiz andLuis Manuel Otero Alcántara. Otero Alcántara and Nuñez are the founders of Cuba’s Museum of Dissidence, a website and public art project that won Index’s 2018 Freedom of Expression Arts Award. The Museum of Dissidence works to reclaim the meaning of the word “dissidence” and support a new generation of artists dedicated to empowering marginalised communities, challenging repression and defending freedom of expression.
All of those arrested were accused of public disorder with Otero Alcántara facing an additional charge of aggression. All were released on the same day except Otero Alcántara who remains in detention. As Nuñez said on Facebook on 23 July, Otero Alcántara is expected to remain at the Vivac detention centre for five to six more days. After speaking with authorities she noted that “they did not talk to me at all about a trial or about what crime he was accused of”.
“Index denounces the arrest and continued detention of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara for peacefully protesting in favour of free expression,” said Perla Hinojosa, fellowships and advocacy officer at Index on Censorship. “Despite the repercussions and lack of dialogue, the group’s actions were successful because if you have the government’s attention, you’re probably stirring something up in them that makes them feel threatened.”
On 22 July Otero Alcántara, Nuñez, Ruiz, Pacheco and Cuban artist Tania Bruguera published an open letter calling on the government institutions to engage in a dialogue with independent artists, seeking a voice in discussions on the cultural policy which so deeply concerns their line of work. On 23 July Nuñez delivered a legal writ to Havana’s Provincial Court demanding to know more about Otero Alcántara’s case within 72 hours.
In May 2018 Otero Alcántara and Nuñezorganised the first #00Bienal de la Habana, a ten-day independent art biennial including over 170 artists and creators from within and outside Cuba. For this, Otero Alcántara was imprisoned under the pretence of illegally possessing construction materials. The suppression of independent art has only worsened under Cuba’s new president, Miguel Díaz‑Canel, who succeeded Raúl Castro in April 2018. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1532445359224-5021f869-3d4a-0″ taxonomies=”7874″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Despite official efforts to stop it in its tracks, Cuba saw the successful completion of its first independent art biennial, organised without the support of the state, on 15 May. Artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara and curator Yanelys Nuñez Leyva, members of the Museum of Dissidence, winner of the 2018 Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for art, organised the ten-day #00Bienal de la Habana, which included over 170 artists, writers, musicians and theorists across nine different exhibitions in artists’ homes and studios around the country’s capital.
“Cuban culture is centralised culture and the government has absolute control,” Nuñez Leyva tells Index on Censorship. “The Ministry of Culture, together with all its branches such as the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba and the National Council of Plastic Arts, are tentacles of the Ministry of the Interior, so all independent proposals, whether cultural, ecological or campaigns against gender violence, for example, are cursed with all the might of the government-controlled media.”
Even at schools pupils are served up propaganda intent on turning them against non-state-approved artists. Some art school students were shown a video portraying Otero Alcantara as a mercenary. “Such a campaign inevitably generates fear around independent projects which then suffer due to lack of both social and economic support,” Nuñez Leyva says.
Economic support was one of the biggest obstacles for #00Bienal. “At the beginning, we thought that we would produce it with what we had at hand, but along the way we realised that we needed more,” Nuñez Leyva says. So a Gofundme campaign was set up, which raised $6,574. “But this wasn’t easy: the impact of the US blockade, our isolation from the world of networks and the impossibility of having credit cards made the process anguishing.”
Otero Alcantara was also imprisoned without cause on several occasions as part of the Cuban government’s campaign of harassment. Others who took part in #00Bienal, whether Cuban or foreign, received similar harassment. Many were even denied entry to the country, including the Cuban-American artist Coco Fusco.
When #00Biennial was announced in September 2017, the Cuban government immediately began to show its discontent through its cultural institutions. In an official declaration they branded the organisers as “unscrupulous people”. In response, #00Bienal’s first slogan was: “From the official to the unscrupulous.”
As culture is so tightly controlled in Cuba, only artists seen to be working in the interests of the regime can operate without restriction. Approved artists usually receive perks, something that gives them a higher status in society. Some artists risked all of this by taking part in #00Bienal. “The system used the worst blackmail against them because they gave the event a legitimacy that the government did not want,” Otero Alcantara says. “These artists were threatened by having their government accreditation taken away. Without this, they would find themselves without ‘official work’.”
Government agents stalked the exhibitions while the organisers were accused of being in league with Cuba’s enemies. How does one respond to such accusations? “We responded by making an event that is as honest as possible, with a wide range of manifestations and artistic expressions that reflected the reality of Cuban art,” Nuñez Leyva says. “We responded with a list of more than 170 participants, not only Cubans, but from Mexico, Spain, Germany, the United States, Romania, Angola, Colombia, Denmark, Ukraine, Brazil, Venezuela, among them high-profile artists that Cuban institutions admire and collaborated with.”
The authorities even tried to prohibit the public from attending, sometimes successfully. Flyers and stickers were also confiscated. “But none of these actions were ever going to stop the energy of the event,” Otero Alcantara says.
“Despite all this pressure, the event went ahead, demonstrating that there is a group of people who are very courageous and have a real commitment culture,” Nuñez Leyva says. #00Bienal helped revive “a spirit of alternative rebellion” through the involvement of “countless numbers of totally unknown artists” that the state would never endorse.
For Otero Alcantara, the event’s success lies in the cohesion it created between artists, scholars and art enthusiasts, something that is unprecedented in the world of Cuban art. “We built an inclusive space of free creation and true collaboration between the people involved, exhibited the work of artists who were never going to have space in an official Havana Biennial and set a precedent for future projects,” he says. “This is one more step towards eliminating a fear that exists throughout Cuba.”
According to the organisers, the terms “revolution” or “revolutionary” have been hijacked and distorted by the Cuban regime. Such deformation has taken root so deep in the imagination of the Cuban people that just by mentioning the word “dissidence” is enough to be shunned, they explain.
“The #00Bienal was a humanistic project that brought to the fore essential values for any society such as unity, solidarity and collaboration,” Nuñez Leyva says. “The event also favoured the less privileged and created beauty and dialogue in favour of a new Cuba.”
The organisers of #00Bienal are under no illusions that life for Cuba’a dissident artists will magically become any easier under Cuba’s new president, Miguel Díaz‑Canel, who took over from Raúl Castro in April 2018. “The Cuban regime is more than any Castro,” Nuñez Leyva says. “It is a system based on a group of families that live both inside and outside the island, who have control over everything, which ultimately contributes to their own wealth.” This corrupt system relies on the deception of a people who have been left without even the strength even to protect themselves against poverty, she adds. “This situation leaves us with little hope, but we have to keep working.”
Otero Alcantara and Nuñez Leyva’s now want to show that #00Bienal wasn’t just a one-off, but is a serious project with longevity. “We will see if it is possible in two years to achieve something similar,” Otero Alcantara says.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_media_grid grid_id=”vc_gid:1528443291288-dfd45bff-0a16-7″ include=”100716,100712,100711,100710,100713,100709,100708,100707,100706,100704,100715,100705″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Artists, writers, musicians and theorists who took part in #00Bienal
Amaury Pacheco (Cuba), Iris Ruiz (Cuba), Coco Fusco (Cuba-USA), Tania Bruguera (Cuba), Reynier Leyva Novo (Cuba), Ernesto Oroza (Cuba), Gerardo Mosquera (Cuba), Katherine Bisquet (Cuba), Jose Ernesto Alonso, Yuri Obregón (Cuba), Alein Somonte (Cuba), Alejandro Barreras (Cuba), Anaeli Ibarra (Cuba), Alejandro Taquechel (Cuba), Ariel Maceo Tellez (Cuba), Aryam (Cuba), Aldeide Delgado (Cuba), Armando Cuspinera (Mexico), Antonio Mas (Spain), Alicia Torres (Spain), Ana Olema (Cuba), Alexis Ruiseco (Cuba-USA), Alexandru Raevschi (Germany), Andrés X (Cuba), Alain Aspiolea (Cuba), Alexandre Arrechea (Cuba), Antoni Muntadas (Spain), Biennial Project (USA), Boris González Arenas (Cuba), Colectivo Corason i uevo (Antonio A. Orta, Maykel Almenteros y Pedro Pablo Bacallao) (Cuba), Colectivo Guerrillas Girls, Celia y Yunior (Cuba), Colectivo 2.50 (Ana Gómez, Argelia Leodegarío, Marco Antonio Rodríguez, Itandehuitl Orta, Yuvia Pérez, Esmeralda Pérez) (Mexico), Carlos Manuel Álvarez (Cuba), Clara Astiasarán, Chu (Cuba), David de Omni, David León (Cuba), Danilo Maldonado (El Sexto), Diego Gil (Spain), Eliecer Jiménez Almeida (Cuba), Erish (Mexico), El Oficio (Cuba), Ernesto Hernandez Busto, Enfori García, Filipa César (Portugal), Fabián (2+2 =5) (Cuba), Francis Sánchez (Cuba), Francisco Méndez (Mexico), Francisco Masó (Cuba), Fabian Martínez, Filio Gálvez, Fredric Snitzer, Gabriel Coto (Cuba), Gerardo Stübing (España), Gean Moreno, Henri Eric Hernández (Cuba), Hamlet Lavastida (Cuba), Héctor Trujillo (Cuba), Hugo Patao, Italo Expósito (Cuba), Iván de la Nuez (Cuba), Jesús Hdez-Güero (Cuba), Jesús Benítez (Mexico), José Luis Marrero (Cuba), Josvan Gonzalez Agramonte (Cuba), Julián Yunda Yepes (Mexico), Jenifer Acuña (Cuba), Juan Melo (Colombia), Juan Carlos Alvarez Miranda (Cuba), Jean-Lorin Sterian (Romania), José Bedia (Cuba), Julio César Llopiz (Cuba), Javier Marimón, José Manuel Mesías (Cuba), Keyezua (Angola), Kevin Arrow, Lía Villares (Cuba), Luis Trápaga (Cuba), Luiso, Leandro Villanueva (Sam 33) (Cuba), Lester Dubé (Cuba), Lala Misosniky (Romania), La Alianza (Cuba), Liliam Dooley, Leandro Feal (Cuba), Lourdes Porrata, Miquel García (Spain), Marisol Maza (Mexico), Marcel Marquez (Cuba), Marianna Liosi (Germany), MO colectivo (Mariam Abrajim y Octavio Salazar) (Colombia), Magdiel Aspillaga, Mysora García, Nonardo Perea (Cuba), Natalia López (Colombia), Osmel Almaguer Delgado (Cuba), Osmany Carratalá (Cuba), Oscar Salamanca (Colombia), Orlando Hernández (Cuba), Pablo Pinto (Colombia), Polyanna Morgana (Brazil), Political Architecture: Critical Sustainability (PA:CS) (Denmark), Peter Menéndez, Rafael Carabano (Venezuela), Raúl Meriño (Cuba), Ras Yoe, Ricardo Figueredo, Rodolfo Peraza (Cuba), Rafael Domenech, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Svitlana Biedarieva (Ukraine), Soandry del Río (Cuba), Sandra Ceballos (Cuba), Santiago Alvarez Méndez (Colombia), Sandor (Cuba), Thiago Morandi (Brazil), Tomás Sánchez (Cuba), Tomas Vu, Tonel (Cuba), unx Pardo Ibarra (Colombia), Ulises Valdés (Mexico), Walfrido Valera (Cuba), Yaima Pardo (Cuba), Yasser Castellanos (Cuba), Yesica Suárez (Colombia), Yulier P. (Cuba), Yoenis Eloy Mayeta (Cuba), Yimi Konclase (Cuba), Yvelin Buenrostro (Mexico), Yucef Merhi (Venezuela), Yornel Martínez (Cuba), Yali Romagoza (Cuba), Yanier H. Palao (Cuba).[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_basic_grid post_type=”post” max_items=”4″ element_width=”6″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1528443291296-0ad2c295-a239-7″ taxonomies=”104″][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Perla Hinojosa, Fellowship and Advocacy Officer at Index on Censorship, holds the 2018 Freedom of Expression Arts Award for Cuban arts collective Museum of Dissidence, who could not attend the Freedom of Expression Awards. (Photo: Index on Censorship)
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara: First of all I would like to thank Index and everyone for being here. We had to do this via video because the bureaucracy, the embassies and the powers that be prevented us from being here to accept the award. It’s sad, because we would have liked to share this moment with all of you and the happiness that we feel receiving this award. This award for us means a lot but it also means a lot to all the artists who have preceded us and who are the reason why we have been able to work with a little bit more freedom and a little less fear. Antonia Eiriz, Tania Bruguera, Danilo Maldonado, Angel Delgado and all the artists who have suffered a lack of freedom of expression and creative freedom and who in one way or the other have never given up and have fought for their rights.
Yanelys Nuñez Leyva: On my part, I am happy because this is a boost, where the work of the museum is recognised internationally. This is not the work of just two people, it’s the work of a big collective. There’s a lot of artists but also many activists who are involved in the projects of the Museum of Dissidence. And for us, this is a recognition for them as well.
Luis Manuel: Freedom of expression is an integral part of all societies. It’s what allows us to question all the processes that can happen to an individual. From being able to tell a mother that her way of bringing up her children in a certain way is aggressive or not. To being able to say a political system is corrupt. To being able to express yourself to another person without facing violence or repression.
Yanelys: For me, freedom of expression is like breathing and being able to move every day. It’s something natural that enables us to improve ourselves and grow.
Luis Manuel: Freedom of expression also promotes love towards yourself, towards other people and all the people around you.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row disable_element=”yes”][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”84882″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]
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