Detrás del Muro – Behind the Wall: Havana Biennial Exhibition
Detrás del Muro – Behind the Wall: Havana Biennial Exhibition transformed the emblematic Malecón of the Cuban capital into an outdoor art walk with more than 50 works and montages designed for dialogue and interaction with the public.
The habaneros, tourists and the many foreigners who visited the island the Malecón during the days of the 12th Havana Biennial were able to enjoy our famous waterfront boulevard cut off from traffic and flooded with suggestive artistic proposals such as an ice skating rink without ice, an artificial beach or a suggestive big blue cube to appreciate reality with another color.
Detrás del Muro – Behind the Wall: Havana Biennial Exhibition proposed “to turn the Malecón into a great event where all the visual manifestations converge and where there is also a meeting and a dialogue: That art dialogue with the public and with the future,” said Juan Delgado curator of the exhibition whose first edition took place in the 11th Havana Biennial, held in 2012.
On this occasion, fifty local and foreign artists participate, among them a dozen Americans and Cuban-Americans, within a biennial also marked by the expectations that have opened the new stage of relations between the island and the United States.
“The moment between the two countries is fascinating, very special,” said American artist David Opdyke, who visited Cuba for the first time and who admitted that he was surprised by the warmth and hospitality of the Cubans and the contrasts that the discovered between his city, New York, and Havana.
Opdyke participated in Detrás del Muro – Behind the Wall: Havana Biennial Exhibition with the piece “Secondary Growth Line Extension”, an old broken telephone pole and from which a tree is born, a montage with which he wants to contrast the systems of nature with those of the human being, according to he explained.
Also Cuban artists who participated in “Detrás del Muro” perceived the new stage of relationship between Cuba and the United States as an “important moment”, in the words of Rachel Valdés, who appeared again, this time with “Blue Cube”, a installation that invites the viewer to enter a structure to perceive the reality of the Malecón and the sea from another perspective.
A little further, walkers, and especially children, experienced “The birth of freedom”, a suggestive montage as a slide that looks to the sea, whose author is the Cuban female artist Liumidla Lopez.
“Implosion” by Ewerdt Hilgemann; “Primavera” by Rafael San Juan; “Delicatessen”, the great pot of Roberto Fabelo; “Mi energía y yo” by Manuel Mendive; “Resaca” or the imaginary beach of Arlés del Río or “The cold corner” to glide on the ice skate ring designed by Duke Riley were other proposals of Detrás del Muro – Behind the Wall: Havana Biennial Exhibition
The Detrás del Muro – Behind the Wall: Havana Biennial Exhibition inaugurated on the first Sunday afternoon and brought together hundreds of people on the Malecón Habanero, including faces known as Eduardo Cabra, the “Visitor” of the Puerto Rican duo Calle 13, who toured it accompanied by his wife, the Cuban singer Diana Sources.
The Twelfth Biennial of Havana, was the largest event of the visual arts of the Cuban capital with the participation of more than 300 artists and curators from 45 countries.
We hope to meet you at the 13th Havana Biennial. Read more about the early history of the Havana Biennial.