Press Release

Commissioner Mira Vicini 
Curators Jorge Fernández Torres and Giacomo Zaza 

Invited Artists Rui Chafes, Pedro Costa, Antonio Eligio Fernández (Tonel), Glenda León, Magdalena

Campos & Neil Leonard, Francesca Leone, H.H. Lim, Liudmila & Nelson, Hermann Nitsch, Sandra Ramos, Lázaro Saavedra, Gilberto Zorio, Wang Du

On the occasion of the 55th Venice Biennale, the commissioner Miria Vicini, assigned two international curators, Jorge Fernández Torres and Giacomo Zaza, with designing a wide-ranging exhibition, about contemporary art in Cuba regarding current practices and in line with the dialogue and with the complexity of the visions carried out by the International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.

The invited artists will act inside The National Archeological Museum located in Piazza San Marco in Venice, leading to reflections in balance between past, present and future. They will open boundaries exceeding the “linguistic fences” in order to place themselves in the middle of different thematic areas: the relationship between power and information, the fragmentation of the sign and the mediatic use of images, the procedural and phenomenic stadiums, the philosophical thought and the initiation rituals of orgiastic matrix. Their works will lead us through enigmatic and “threatening” territories, and through the iconic flow of exasperated life, marginalized by the system. From Liudmila & Nelson’s artwork, from the installation titled 53+1= 54+1=55. La letra del Año by María Magdalena Campos & Neil Leonard, to the pieces by Gilberto Zorio and Wang Du, Pedro Costa and Rui Chafes, to site specific installation by Glenda León (Música de las esferas), Tonel, Lázaro Saavedra, H.H. Lim and experiences by Sandra Ramos, Hermann Nitsch, and Francesca Leone.

The two curators declare There has never been before such an uncertain and generalized conviction of what we call Art. This fact forces us to rethink the processes which define the artistic value and the meaning of creativity. Design, fashion, and what is returned by consumption generate a sensoriality mapping a profane area full of intersubjectivity.

All narrations rise and descend in unison as intermittent voices of many speeches.
The tenacity of the organizers of the Pavilion of the Republic of Cuba at the Biennale di Venezia wanted us “to occupy” the Archaeological Museum located in Piazza San Marco. Seven Cuban artists will dialogue with seven international artists in order to cohabit a space that makes us think about its nature and on the visibility that the Museum generates today. The perversion of classics: the anarchy of narrations We can perceive that dislocation detected by the French philosopher Jacques Rancière in the transit from the original function of the works to their condition of museum objects. We can discuss the art’s assignment, while we rethink the relationship between reality and fiction, language and power, art and time. The Museum will become a platform where contemporary inter-media practices can interact. At the same time, it will establish a contact with an imagination which exceeds the boundaries of globalized cultural territories, towards decentralized views over values . The exhibition creates a genealogy in which contexts are generated by each one of the artworks presented. Experiences happen in the fleeting archeology of the present and in the confused responsibility of any political construction that transcends individual nations, in an incessant attempt to connect every epistemological intention involving the universe. In a symbiotic relationship with the rest of the mental and ideological conditions of civilizations (from the Greek typological portrait as manifestation of the polis or of the deity, to the Roman honorary bust) contemporary practice invents a “museum” disconnected from any functional and historicist exegesis.
Somehow this experience allows to build, even if it is just for a few months, our little Encyclopedic Palace.

THE CATALOGUE
The publication that will accompany the exhibition will be published by Maretti Editore in three languages :Italian, Spanish and English and it will collect images of the artworks installed in the Archaeological Museum along with new images and archive material of the invited artists. The texts by Jorge Fernández and Giacomo Zaza will analyze the complexity of the project in the Archaeological Museum, focusing on the research and the work of each artist. Through the 200 pages of the book the reader will also find biographical



information and the backstage of the exhibition.
Republic of Cuba Pavilion’s opening 31st of May 2013
Opening to the public 1st of June- 24th of November
Venue National Archeological Museum, Piazza San Marco, Venice
Commissioner Miria Vicini
Curators Jorge Fernández Torres and Giacomo Zaza
Catalogue Maretti Editore