 Good evening everybody. Thank you so much for coming. So much fun to be in this theater with a great crowd I'm Carrie Weber. I'm the executive director of the Fairfield University Art Museum and We are so happy to be opening Archives of Consciousness six Cuban artists tonight Before we turn to our distinguished speaker. I want to take a moment to Well, actually, I'm not sure she's here my bell. Are you here? No, my bell will be here later and you can meet her but we do have my bell poble one of the artists in the exhibition coming tonight and You'll be able to chat with her in the gallery later she spent the day with us on campus yesterday and met with three studio art classes and Shared her artistic practice with them and I've heard only rave reviews about that experience from faculty and students so Before we get started, I want to draw your attention to all of the amazing programs that we have Scheduled in conjunction with this exhibition. So make sure you grab one of these near the gallery before you leave They're also in the back of the brochure. You can also find them on our website and on event bright, but we really have some great things planned Please register because if you don't and you show up and we don't have a seat for you There's nothing we can do about it And I have to do a little small plug for our upcoming I mean our other spring exhibition which is in the Bellarmine Hall galleries, which I hope you can find time to see this semester It's called gifts of gold the art of Japanese lacquer boxes, and it's really beautiful It is now my great pleasure to introduce this evening's speaker and the co-curator of our exhibition Professor of Cuban and Caribbean history at the University of Florida Lillian Guerra is the author of four scholarly books of history Including three books on Cuba as well as several books of Spanish language poetry and a book of short stories That was published in Spain Ecuador and Cuba Born in New York to Cuban exile parents. She grew up in Kansas and Miami Her most recent publications include visions of power in Cuba revolution redemption and resistance 1959 to 1971 recipient of the 2014 Bryce Wood Book Award from the Latin American Studies Association its most prestigious prize for a book on Latin America across all fields and heroes martyrs and political messiahs in Revolutionary Cuba 1946 to 58 published by Yale University Press in 2018 a veteran researcher and observer of Cuban society since 1995 Guerra is also a consummate lover of Cuban art She has curated shows of Cuban art at Yale University Bates College and the office of the historian of the city of Havana Guerra is also the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation the American Council of Learned Societies And she has just been awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for the year 2020-21 Please join me in welcoming Lillian Guerra Buenas noches First it is a great delight to be here. I am honored by Steve Sertlman who asked me to curate this show. I am honored to do so with Ariane Colve And to have worked with Carrie Weber Weber who has been extraordinary in her support and advice So to get started I'm also new at using reading glasses In 1995 when I first lived and conducted research in Cuba My family never tired of remarking that my decision to stay for a whole year would likely condemn me as a writer of contemporary Cuba Having witnessed dozens of Cuban government news reports on foreign journalists Solidarity activists and writers who had visited Cuba since the 1960s My relatives like most Cubans had developed an aversion to the quick tidy images of unity and remarkably static list of revolutionary triumphs Healthcare education housing for all that such visits produced in the global media and foreign mind Repeating a popular mantra on such visits my relatives cautioned Which means if you stay in Cuba for a week you write a book if you stay a month you write an article But if you stay a whole year you write absolutely nothing Eight years ago I published this mantra in a second book on Cuba thereby defying the foreign writer's curse Yet the popular wisdom behind my family's advice Still attest to the incredible political complexities and historic ironies that burden any interpreter of Cuba's everyday reality after 60 years of communist rule Together the works exhibited in archives of consciousness seek to reveal share and most importantly heal The divides and denials that create Cuba's many hidden realities The day-to-day experiences of Cuban citizens and the shared consciousness They have produced is normally hidden from us or normally hidden from us They are hidden either because the component parts of Cuban realities are politically taboo and can't be discussed Or because the critical view they entail is so universally held among Islanders that explaining them to Uncomprehending others would inevitably diminish their ability to empower the cognizant and collective self These works are thus deliberately crafted in the unique cultural codes that Cuban Islanders have developed to talk about Criticize or simply affirm the shared nature of their experience under a mostly unchanging political regime first under freedom Fidel Castro from 1959 to 2009 and then under his brother Raul from 2009 to the present however While their primary audience remains indisputably Cuban and Island based the art in archives of consciousness Operates on a level of intimacy with every viewer It aims to document not only what remains hidden from most outsiders understandings of Cuba, but why it is hidden Answers to the latter question are easy to find as you move from piece to piece Noting the common denominators and their role in projecting a visual intentionality Despite the vast diversity of media Aesthetics and apparent thematic purpose These artists evoke empathy because their works require empathy to tell the many divergent but connected stories of Cuba across generations Most especially these artists generations Perhaps no piece in this exhibit Better exemplifies this set of ideas than the central image of reflected by Mabel Paulette made from the colors of a deconstructed national flag of Cuba the piece evokes nationhood through Cuba libre The historic icon of struggle for national sovereignty that first emerged during Cuba's 319th century wars for freedom first from slavery and second from Cuba's colonizer Spain Here Cuba libre sports a bright red afro and a body decorated in tiny red flowers Manufactured from real-life female prisoners in one of Cuba's contemporary women's jails Like many of Boblitz other pieces in the show Reflected finds beauty and pain and strength in irony so tragic that they can only be grasped and Fully experienced visually There is a Petri dish like quality to many of Boblitz frames It's a feature that signals the great social experiment that cuba's multiple revolutions for equality in the 19th century and over the course of many revolutions in the 20th century That they have evoked but fail to fulfill either in racial or in gender terms Similarly Boblitz Oceanscape Draws us into calming hues of sparkling blue But they also trap us in a relentless hypnotic Circularity of unchanging change Boblitz pieces are a good starting point for this exhibit because they ask questions that resonate across its pieces across time across space What is freedom to the inhabitants of? Abel Parrosos Cuba centered Caribbean a map made of pencil shavings That in turn decorate the tourist throne a common lounge chair Leisure does not define Cuba and the Caribbean for those who live there Rather work very hard work daily work Lies behind every aspect of life Hidden deliberately and consciously from the tourist view After all why would you go there if you really knew? the fantasy of tourist leisure Realize on the fiction that in the Caribbean there was never slavery That the pleasures of Sun and fun Today are equally shared green card a Peace by Abel Barroso for which he has humorously provided a title in Spanish green card This stands in contrast to the lounge chair It is the ultimate Caribbean or Cuban citizens personal fantasy a US government document of legal belonging that one could hand make Can you imagine? Indeed more than two million Cubans have left Cuba for the United States since the imposition of the United States trade embargo in 1961 and Fidel Castro's adoption of communism to the shock of all in 1961 and The ending of the Soviet Union's 4.4 billion dollar annual subsidy to the Cuban economy that floated Cuba from 1972 to 1991 But for the 11 million 11 million who remain behind as As the often say in bank that The art of invention of hand-making everything from the timer belt for a car engine to homemade shoes In bank that has come to define what it means to be Cuban No one comments on the power and pride inherent to that process more eloquently than Abel Barroso With his artisanal wooden cell phone, which I want you to see so I provide an effort graph or hand cranked laptop computer To Abel Rosos other pieces in this exhibit yet these works dialogue with pieces like green card To reveal the ultimate futility the decades spent developing such skills mean for Cubans as they confront an external world Where technology? Like the possibility of travel let alone migration the possibility of tourism Let alone Leisure are not normal aspirations in life But often far too far-fetched and fantastical to be much more than dreams In a country where ATM machines were only sporadically introduced in 2014 and We're getting money out of one's personal bank account still requires explaining to a government employed bank teller Why you want to withdraw your own money? Cubans consciousness of their general ignorance of how the rest of the world lives and Works is a source that unites and creates pride in uniqueness Barroso events is the combination of pride That Cubans share in their ability to unite to survive and to subvert their state-imposed Isolation and the multiple paradoxes that their Communist Party-led capitalist economy has created in their lives since 1991 Cubans collective history since the 1959 revolution Stands at the center of many of the works in this exhibit particularly those by Diago Choco and Mindy way Contemplating the past in their art One also apprehends not only its legacies in the present But the presence of the past in the consciousness of those who live it That's Diago's piece shared visions all as the viewer Much as the inescapable image of Cuba's million-person obligatory mass rallies Once astonished foreign observers and fellow citizens alike In the early decades of the Cuban state after 1959 mass rallies were voluntary Rather not in the early decades in the early two years early years of the Cuban Communist state and revolution They were voluntary after 1961. However, they became obligatory orchestrated and organized by workplaces in schools evaluations of your attendance were automatic necessary to ensure unanimity and ideological homogeneity Both of which were openly held and policed as the highest national ideals yet Policing and holding these ideals as personal and national integral parts of one's consciousness produced alienation distressed in the idea of one entire people behind one particular image one particular understanding of revolution So rallies like this are still necessary to attend and 80% of the population of Cuba still works for the Cuban state so distance distrust alienation questioning animates the angles your life and mine The complement to shared visions similarly, I would argue jocles series of calligraphs and other works in particular the calligraphs titled. I am watching you Surely document the constant surveillance and suspicion to which slaves and black Cubans Were subject across generations for 350 years But they also speak loudly to the Cuban revolutions mandate that all system citizens join Block-to-block watch organizations called committees for the defense of the revolution and the role of these committees commonly called CDR CDRs in Determining the course of one's life. I am watching you first founded in September 1960 ostensibly to prevent CIA backed counter-revolutionaries from setting bombs and carrying out acts of sabotage CDRs quickly became the Cuban government's primary means for forcibly including all citizens in its surveillance structures Fidel Castro said in 1962 that he dreamed of the moment when there would need to be no ministry of the interior, which is the equivalent of an internal CIA He dreamed of the moment when every citizen would be a deputy of the ministry of the interior an Intelligence force that would in fact monitor not just others, but oneself So not only called to denounce their neighbors for violating communist economic laws Members of CDRs were what Fidel Castro called a million the top of all guys a million mouth shutters Charged after 1964 with the task of silencing anyone on the street at school at work Or in their own homes for criticizing the state the policies the vision of the future that he promised Criticizing the state its policies or its leaders was not officially illegal until 1975 But it was a politically sanctionable form of treason long before then and it remains Illegal with a minimum two-year sentence for criticizing openly any leader of state By 1968 membership in CDRs were mandatory was mandatory From that year to the present CDRs produced secret evaluations of every individual's political beliefs and attitudes In each neighborhood and these files follow one from kindergarten to college from cradle to grave Indeed although much diminished in their power and their reach since the early 90s as a consequence of the state's increasing Illegitimacy the CDR is nonetheless pursue all citizens who violate a spectrum of political crime called and defined by Raul Castro in 1968 as Diversion is more illogical ideological diversionism and peligrosity social social dangerousness after 1971 Famously subjecting homosexuals intellectuals and otherwise recalcitrant citizens to forced labor electroshock treatment and other forms of what the state called Rehabilitation Politica political rehabilitation Chocos I am watching you Acquires meaning these pieces document this myriad of historical facts and experiences in an image These works condemn the complicity of Cubans who made them possible by claiming political and moral authority over others The right to be the state The right to be the revolution Made it to the shape in this case of a plate a dinner plate Chocos most powerful version of I am watching you suggests a system that literally serves up its own members a plate or on a plate and Consumes them in an act of narcissistic cannibalism when I first saw Luis camejos deluvial centered works many years ago at a show in Havana I Found myself with a dozen or so Cubans gathered around them laughing Indeed, I would argue that there is an intense humor to Chocos works as well as the agos as well as Luis camejos and the others in this exhibit That humor remains invisible to many non Cubans just as there is kind of dark human humor that is Impalpable unless you know the Cuban experience in these works Humor and dark humor side-by-side the light and dark of the watercolors of Luis camejo How are these works funny? They are humorous because they dare To reveal what so many of us so many Cubans, but so many Islanders think and feel Living in Havana a city where the United Nations once estimated that 11,000 housing units collapse per year It is easy for Cubans to be overwhelmed by the extent of the crisis that grips the very structures of their reality Whether they are built or political or economic or symbolic or mental To Cubans who have experienced decades of insufficient food rations a collapsing education system Medicine less hospitals and weeks of city or province-wide blackouts The question can you really get worse than this? Haunts their daily existence and it makes others laugh It was a weapon of Peror You know the irony can this get worse and Cubans laugh when people say that when the others say that Here camejo reverses the flood of doubt at hopelessness that so often inundates Cuba and proposes a stark Biblical solution the cleansing of a real flood Noah's flood by contrast Works like Central Park, which form part of our exhibit or the Hague this piece Through these works camejo shares the experience of travel with a Cuban public denied that right By watercoloring it for them on paper much as 19th century European natural naturalists or European Explorers might have drawn Havana for Parisians or Italians or Englishmen The act itself as well as the image that results Inverts the power of the third world artist Documenting the exotic urban scenes as it were of the greatest imperial cities on earth Finally I want to end Where most believers in the slave religion of Santeria or regla de orcha begin With an invocation to the orisha of the crossroads and the keeper of destinies Elegua Mendeebes Elegua Crafted as the living vessel the believers consecrated to Elegua would make from clay and hide From observers site in a corner of their home usually in a closet on the floor Mendeebes Elegua is not just a spiritual vessel, but a representation of that spiritual vessel Making visible at accessible what would normally be hidden from view Mendeebes honors the ancestors who first embodied and aspired to claim ideas of freedom and control over one's destiny as universal aspirations in Elegua feeds me He comments humorously on the singularly Cuban experience of standing in a ration line This is a nearly daily act that like attending mass Pro-government rallies struggling against a flood of doubt or participating in Cuba's system of surveillance unites all Cubans in a common identity and shared consciousness Here Mendeebes humans are transformed into their spiritual selves Dressed in red and olive green his central figure carries Elegua the true father who genuinely feeds him and renders him protection from all fear this strict reciprocity and strict symbiotic relationships between humans and Supreme beings of Santeria Cannot help but stand in stark contrast To those of the meek and powerful in our everyday political and material world Not just in Cuba system beyond In inviting inviting viewers to see past themselves and engage in a collective spiritual introspection Mendeebes joins all the artists whose works make up archives of consciousness Daring fearless bold and delightful Archives of consciousness does not shy away from complexity But wields it with humor and pride revealing an alternative inviting and most of all inspirational Cuba to all Today's citizens of Cuba have entered a bold new age in which the state's claim to ideological conformity Loyalty and political control is resurgent the new Cuban constitution of 2019 requires quote the defense of the socialist fatherland as the highest obligation of every citizen Unquote and declares failure to do so as quote treason the most grave of all crimes Requiring the most severe of punishments unquote articles 4 through 9 go on to define the power of the Communist Party as irrevocable irrevocable and Demand quote strict compliance with the socialist legal system as the obligation of all unquote in 2018 Cuban officials preceded the promulgation of this Constitution with decree 349 a law that reverses the reforms of 1991 that allowed artists intellectuals musicians and other creative voices to make Display and sell their works independently of the state Today no art can be displayed Can be sold in Cuba without the approval of an agency of the state according to the decree 349 implemented in December 2018 So each short the diversity of perspectives and critical views inscribed in the dozens of artistic works that comprise archives of consciousness are Possibly more salient to understanding current events in Cuba and the struggles of the future Then the artists who made them might ever have predicted. I Am thrilled to be a part of this project and I'm happy to take questions and comments. Thank you very much So I've been told we do not have a microphone out there But again, I think we could probably hear you if you if everyone has a comment or a question Yes Well, the artistic community is a very privileged community It became increasingly so in in the 90s because of these reforms that allowed them for the first time to for instance To sell artwork from their home and from home galleries In fact, they were explosive in their critiques And because they generated on the one hand wealth for the country, they brought people They also generated a plethora of images of Cuba's liberalization They really did not have a legal legally inscribed Reality to it because the reforms that were passed in 1991 were supposedly entirely economic Fidel never admitted to there being a political or ideological crisis of any nature And it still hasn't been admitted that anybody doubts or it's worse than before no no no Nothing like that. So artists became entrepreneurs and They are extraordinarily well Well, well taught in Cuba a lot of the generation of artists that are from my generation whose works we see here Were taught in the Soviet method where you had to learn Multiple media you didn't just learn how to paint, you know You got to do that the very end of your your your academic career as an artist Whether at the National Academy or at the incidental superior daddy. So these people have an incredible Oficial you call technique And could work in multiple media and you saw that in the amazing diversity of stuff that started being produced so to end up the remark what we got was and we still have a management of Descent in Cuba, especially among artists because they have become so powerful an economic voice When the Kretel 349 this decree Was announced in August of last year It shocked everyone and effectively things happened that you know, you would be shocked You would be you know anybody who is in a reserve of Cuba would be shocked by because precisely because they're illegal So there was a sit-in at the the ministry of culture And it was a multiple-generational participatory sit-in That was to demand changes. There were backdoor meetings It's not really clear how and to what degree they will implement this because Taking away what artists achieved particularly the plastic artists those who are not writers Not the typical intellectual but painters and sculptors and the folks we we are honoring tonight you know that to take away their rights to travel after they have Become creatures of that and they express and they they comment on that would be very politically damaging and very difficult to enforce And it would get you know This is a state that has highly militarized under Raul in ways that it wasn't prior to Raul taking power formally in 2009 But it's still very vulnerable economically and and so it has to manage Descent and it has to manage discontent There's a writer who has described this as It's it's not managing dissent. It's creating dissonance out of dissent So dissonance the son ansia as opposed to DC Danesia. That's the goal. So this writer would claim His name is Grenier great book on on art So that's what I would say and and I think that Barroso in particular and not so much Not just here but in these works, but he comments extensively on their privilege that they that they travel and traveling and sort of the Dream of travel also how when Cubans of any, you know Category whether they're an elderly person who got a five-year visa under Obama and his visit of the United States or a great Artists when they return home inevitably they have to explain This extraordinary world that exists out here And even just the ATM machine that I that I mentioned I mean to use one today in Cuba the fee is 45 CUC Ford is like the equivalent of like 60 bucks You know, so even though when they emerged like people thought well They had seen them in American movies and for decades, you know They would people would ask you if you were a foreigner you're an American What's an ATM machine you just get money out of it, you know the whole banking system Makes no sense, you know, and so you constantly having to ask these questions or answer these weird questions but so that's that's a Very very much represented in that particular artist's work is the trauma of And the burden of being able to travel to have this specific right and yet not you know Not being fully capable of handling the guilt that goes with that because it is a mark of their privilege Yes, well interestingly enough, okay, so this phrase doble morale, which means sort of double morality Most of us associate with the 90s but actually it was very much a parlance a part of the parlance of Cuba in the 80s and it Resulted from the fact that in the mid 80s when most of us would think the contrary But it turned out that the years in which the the Cuban government received the most aid that we're not talking about loans We're talking about just just take the money from the Soviet Union were 84 85 and 86 and So there's a film called mentiras adora mentiras Adorable mentiras where they use the phrase doble morale and the movie is about in fact The sort of new class that had existed after the government became communist where you know You became if you were a member of the Communist Party, which is important to note Was the smallest Communist Party in the entire Communist world never has until the 90s was more than 1% It's usually less than that was of the population of Cuba were members of the party so in the 80s Cubans began to use this phrase to describe the the way in which these people seem to exist in a kind of you know hyper reality of economic Access and luxury that nobody had on the island and they were given access To what were called deep loss which were essentially supposed to be for diplomats and for foreign People who were foreigners and in Cuba as diplomats are part of the foreign service They could go to these stores with these bottles and buy stuff so what happened in in the early 90s the phrase expanded in its use and became extremely common Because the Cuban state which retained The Communist Party at its head suddenly reversed all of the great quote-unquote great triumphs of the revolution So, you know Cuba supposed to be for the Cubans Tourism was supposed to be national foreign investors were according to Fidel Castro and I'm quoting, you know the next next next to the devil you know like, you know demonic Diabolical and in their in their ways of reshaping and recasting economies now One might say that is not historically Inaccurate for Latin America, but it was there therefore even more stunning for a population that many of which many of whom had grown up with This philosophy and view of the world Regardless of the view of the government to suddenly find that the Cuban state communist state would Create a system of tourism Where Cubans could not participate that was entirely based on joint ventures between the Communist Party and foreign capitalists You know, how is that possible? So doble moral suddenly seemed to be something you could apply to the Cuban communist state to Fidel Castro to anybody who is a supporter of this ridiculously hypocritical scenario It remains so Despite the fact that the state has regularly and repeatedly expanded opportunities for self-employment And then once that sector begins to compete with the state for the tourist dollar for the foreigners dollar Then it it reverses course takes away licenses raids the businesses Has done this repeatedly I could give dates and etc. But I will refrain from too much detail Doble moral therefore Becomes something that you could use it in fact to describe and artists themselves used to describe their own condition Because they make money off of the sale of Cuba and the sale of the paradoxes that they Inscribe and they document and the the works of the 90s include for instance a painting by Douglas Perez Called doble moral where you have we don't we're not showing his work here But the painting is an image is an image easy to describe It's it's an image of Tropicana dancers and their reflection in the pool in front of them is a reflection of Militianas so women who are not only supporters of revolution, but militia women, you know who joined to defend the fatherland So I'll end that point, but doble moral is used very frequently to describe this whole system and The in the word system a also matters It is how Cubans have since the late 60s described the government so interestingly have long before we had the internet You can find as I have in memoirs and letters people using the phrase disconnectar One thing that everybody wants to do when they get home is shut the door Keep the state out Close the shutters the windows and disconnect disconnect disconnect from the system It's intense. Isn't it? It's intense. I think that the pieces that we have in this exhibit are all very intense Individually you could spend a lot of time with each one of them other questions. I know there were hands there somewhere Yes Oceanscape. Yeah release from prison And I'd say first it's something that Cubans who are from Havana in particular become obsessed with because There is an imprisoning quality to water if you if it's illegal for you to like you to just craft your own boat And and go out for a spin. I mean you can't do that in Cuba. You can't make your sailboat and go out It's illegal and and in the 90s in the early 90s. You might all recall between 1991 1994 There was this astonishing Balcedo crisis where tens of thousands of people made their own rafts made their own boats a violated Cuba law left the country but in the summer of 1994 Literally 35,000 and some almost 36,000 people made boats in less than two months and arrived between June and August of 1994 and flooded Florida Straits The Cuban excuse me the US Coast Guard Estimated that for every Cuban that had arrived another had died So they found out tens of thousands of empty rafts in the Florida Straits and that happened because the Cuban government called off its own Coast Guard in order to alleviate the pressures created by the extraordinary discontent and An outrage over the hypocrisy that I described earlier so Water and the way it entraps you, you know, it seems so ironic how you know water which should we should see as A highway, you know, it should see it as a conduit of change If you can't cross that expanse It becomes a it becomes an emblematic of your imprisonment in this place that could be any place It doesn't have to be Cuba, but you know the isolation that you suddenly become aware of if you stare at this ocean So for for artists based in Havana who grew up and lived and experienced the the period of that crisis the intensity of it seeing You know, everybody who lived those years can tell you that you lived on the Malacombe You live where my family lived five blocks from the Malacombe, which is the seawall. You know any day There would be hundreds of people out on the shore, you know this be the end of say Blessing which means saying goodbye blessing each other, you know kissing hugging It was pretty striking so the water water images are I think central to That kind of archive of experience that is specific to the 90s and they also become part of the repertoire of Cultural codes to which artists and others can refer to kind of unite I mean you see an image of water in Cuba and it sort of unites you if you're a Cuban immediately to This commonality, you know, there's and it evokes different emotions depending on how the water is depicted so The water in camejos work, and I showed only one of his water pieces and not all of them are floods But you know, it's also extraordinary how water in inundates Havana from May to September Because they haven't cleaned the account area all the streets flood kids You know grab on to the back of a truck and they're literally surfing on the the two feet of water that inundate the streets for 30 minutes or 50 minutes or four hours And that's a common sight if you don't have an umbrella, which most people don't don't in Cuba God knows works where you see people with umbrellas. They're striking because you don't notice the person. You just notice the umbrella And that's on purpose because an umbrella is like an extraordinary thing to have like, you know I mean wow wish we all had umbrellas when Cuba's government has imported umbrellas There always is terrible quality umbrellas that we also complain about in the United States You know, but you have to live through the experience of sitting or standing after work You know and being just flooded by this extraordinary Downpour for two hours and you get soaked to the bone While you're waiting for your bus or you're trying to get home and that's just a it's it's something that's inescapable It's so inescapable. It is essential to cubanus And so that those are why those works not just the critique, etc Of the condition political condition or otherwise But just the sort of central daily experiences of being Cuban water is one of those and the kind of falls from the sky That you can't control and the kind that stands in front of you and constantly tempts you to dream Yes Yes, that's an excellent question Mindy Bay Has created in most of his career has created physical representations of the deities and orishas as we call them saints of Santiría That's technically kind of a violation of Santiría's rules. You should never represent physically An orisha so in doing so he violates the rules of the faith and at the same time He honors them because what he is trying to show through these paintings I think is effectively that according to Santiría we live surrounded constantly by our ancestors and by a spiritual presence that has names and faces and When you are connected to it because you're a believer in the faith you learn the practices of Relating to those ancestors and to those orishas It is a very symbiotic relationship and it is one to one It is the more you feed your Deity and the more you pray and talk to your deity the more the deity Will guide you but the deities the orishas are not perfect beings like saints in Catholicism are they have usually in most cases a Catholic saint that is connected to the the Orisha It is not true. I would I would not argue that the orisha is hiding behind the saint. No when slaves created this religion they were Taken in their vast majority from Africa because the majority of slaves in Cuba were never born in Cuba They killed them before they had a chance to reproduce so they were you know 90% of Cuban slaves enslaved Were enslaved Africans or not 90 but 70% to 90% depending on the period from the 1780s to the 1860s and so These these people who arrive have to understand that when they they get to the dock and they've survived this horror of the passage The first thing that happens to them is they're baptized and the second thing that happens to them is they're branded and And from that point forward, they're trying to make sense of this world And those who I would imagine were the intellectuals who crafted the faith in a coherent way They would see you know at the Catholic cross with Jesus suffering on the cross They would see in the homes of the planters, you know all this imagery of Catholicism that shows the opposite of wealth that shows the opposite of those who are their oppressors And they would identify with those images and connect them to the images of the West African mostly Nigerian orishas that become santeria so this this this what what Mendeebe is showing us is Often I mean effectively it's an instruction on how you know We perceive ourselves to live in this material world, but we are actually ignoring in that process the spiritual world which we are a part of and Diago does something similar is a wonderful piece called mis muertos my dead It's really stunning. It's one of the first pieces on the left as you enter the gallery And it's very dark a piece But he also is using this and the last thing to say about santeria is that it's a very secret religion You know is mostly criminalized today in Cuba after 1991 there is freedom of religion and yet You know the vast majority of people who are arrested for social dangerousness are are black and they are accused of Practicing in some way santeria or connecting the black market and economic Illegalities to santeria and prior to that It was it was literally illegal and probably the most persecuted of all the religions in Cuba Especially in the 70s in the 80s So it's a very secretive religion and its rules and knowledge of the religion really can only come from being a part of the religion And so if that's why in fact, Mendeebe is just so spectacular in the ways in which he draws you in and then lets you sit there You know and contemplate this image that you'll never really fully understand and who cares There's a sort of who cares if you don't understand it and you feel that too because you're there's an intimacy to the To the distance if I could say it in that way. Yeah, I hope you enjoy those pieces. We also have Thanks to Steve Sertlman's Extraordinary generosity these wonderful sculptures by Mendeebe including these four chairs that I did not discuss But they're they're really really wonderful pieces So shall we all go see the art? Thank you so much