Dynamically, the NFTs (non-fungible tokens) have been gaining space within the Cuban visual panorama, despite the issue in access to the Web on the island, when it comes to prices and connection speed, two fundamental elements for those starting on this new world of the digital environment.
The creation of several platforms (Clit Splash, NFT.Fac, NFTcuban.Art) in recent months, has allowed tons of of artists to insert their works as NFT on various platforms and thus promote the commercialization of their works, alternatives which are greater than effective given the shortage of physical exhibition spaces in Cuba, on account of restrictions due to COVID-19.
Cuban Women Art is the exhibition going down lately in that context of digital art, where 20 women show their works with quite a lot of formats that we will rarely find in traditional spaces for the exhibition of artworks.
The visual and exhibition wealth that NFTs provide is evidenced within the exhibition, where among the visual artists intervene in a private capability, while others achieve this through different projects equivalent to those mentioned above.
#CubanWomanArt exhibition is live!!https://t.co/MDT8jEjms6
— GabrielBianchini.ethᵍᵐ 🇨🇺 (@GGBIANCHINI) August 31, 2021
Photographs, drawings, illustrations, collages, videos…the means are diverse and converge in the identical space, where the female travels through various points to accumulate meanings that complement one another and show a reasonably comprehensive outlook of the protagonists’ artistic work.
Names equivalent to Evelyn Sosa, Idania del Rio, Dayani Muñoz, Claudia Padrón, Denise Roque, Simone García Bacallao, Liz Capote, Yinet Pereira, Kina Matahari, Diana Rubi, Sandra Guerra Bianchini, are a few of those repeated among the many 41 pieces on exhibition in Cuban Women Art.
The intimacy of the feminine body within the works The Hori-Hori Knife Will Bury Your Tears and From Ada’s Rib… (Simone García Bacallao), Living it (Yolanda Santa Cruz), Farewell (Nadia Díaz Graveran), Three muses (Irenilla), Political Stance and 69 Lao Tzu, the last two by Kina Matahari, are pieces that explore various sensual/sexual points of the feminine anatomy, and in turn dialogue with the body positive, the acceptance of the bodies, the sexual act and the expressions and meanings that these elements come to represent for ladies, away from macho or conservative gazes.
The portrait also stands out on this exhibition, with an exquisite selection within the visual environment, with works equivalent to Mariana (Evelyn Sosa), Renpet (Claudia Padrón), Nuances and Sea Woman (Denise Roque), and the hyper-realistic pieces by Diana Rubi.
Also standing out are the works by Dayani Muñoz, two digital collages that, under the discourse of female empowerment and an aesthetic that plays with kitsch, resizes messages within the fragments that make up their montages, where the cluster of intertexts — persistently with recognized patterns — is conditioned to border a powerful discourse within the pieces History told by icons (Collage 1) and A day in heaven.
Alternatively, a more intimate discourse will be seen within the pieces by Alejandra Glez. and Ailen Maleta. On the one hand, Maleta uses works equivalent to Delirios and Sin Fin from her series En la carpintería, which show reflections (reasonably shadows) of what her education was within the years she lived within the workshop where her father worked, an influencing aspect in her personality and her work because the artist describes this stage as “moments of pain and loneliness,” which allowed her to seek out herself living in a delirium.
Meanwhile, Glez. presents her concerns through Self Portrait and Swallow Men, reflecting to a certain extent conducts and behaviors, expressing anxiety attacks and impulses within the face of certain actions, going just a little beyond a private vision to indicate concerns and, why not, promoted desires through interaction with men, as with Swallow Men.
The visual, artistic and emancipatory universe of Cuban Women Art within the Cuban art scene stays to be discovered, in an exhibition where not only young artists win with the dissemination and sale of their works, almost without intermediaries, but it’s also another for the long run insertion of more artists within the vast world encompassed by the NFTs.
In the course of the exhibition, as well as, theoretical panels have been organized that seek to dialogue with Cuban artists and specialists, in an effort to further enhance this market, within the face of new challenges and opportunities within the visual arts sector. With a Havana Biennial on the way in which, stuffed with doubts and with the aim, in accordance with its organizers, of enhancing the visibility of national artists, Cuban Women Art is yet one more opportunity for Cuban digital art to succeed in more people within the country, avoiding the difficult obstacle of being a digital native on a quasi-disconnected island.
