Latest news with #ContemporaryArtMuseum
Yahoo
27-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Opinion - A visit to Cuba reveals stasis, inequality and desperation
In the late 1990s, acclaimed Cuban mystery writer Leonardo Padura captured the poignant resignation of those who chose to stay on the island, enduring hardships following both the Cuban Revolution and the Soviet Union's collapse. Padura's main character, Mario Conde, is a hard-boiled police detective who disdains ideology (despite majoring in 'dialectical materialism' at university), observing in 'Havana Red' that the city 'still retains some of its magic, as if it had an invincible poetic spirit.' Described as a noirish 'tropical Marlowe,' Padura wrote about the 'Special Period,' Fidel Castro's name for the years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Russia had been a strong supporter of the regime, trading it underpriced oil for overpriced sugar. This gritty angst that Padura described only increased after Russia cut support. For Cubans here, times are difficult — sometimes desperate. The economy is a mess. 'Life here is very, very hard,' one hears over and over. 'La lucha,' the daily struggle for economic survival, obsesses average people. Consider those who are not young or entrepreneurial or who lack access to family capital from Miami. For them, Cuba's sputtering transition from command-socialism to a mixed-market economy invites a steady exodus. In 2022 alone, 250,000 Cubans (of 11.2 million residents) left the island. Among those ill-equipped for the change is Padura's police lieutenant, Conde. In the latest mystery, 'The Transparency of Time,' he is now retired from the force, wearily approaching 60 and trying to survive as a private investigator, 'in a country whose newly cosmopolitan worship of money has made him more of a skeptic than ever,' in 'a society so focused on regimenting ethical, political, and social behaviors.' Havana, the detective observes, 'functioned as a mirror of a country whose foundation was also cracking, conquered by the weight of time, apathy, and a history of exhaustion.' And yet, like most Cubans, he stays. Fuel shortages and power outages are producing regular local and nationwide blackouts, including one recently during my fourth visit to Cuba since 1978. Food at state-operated supermarkets can be scarce. Rationing barely helps. Island tourism — down 50 percent since 2017 — suffered from Covid's unmerciful battering. Oceanside hotels, some brand new, are largely vacant. Crumbling Old Havana buildings are neither preserved nor restored. Daytime tourists attract street peddlers, musicians and beggars, replaced at night with sex workers. Sections of the Contemporary Art Museum are roped off due to lack of staff. Havana's public transportation system barely exists. Many revolutionary-era billboards are fading. Class stratification and social inequality, both roughly along racial lines, have returned, despite the revolution's goals. Since 2018, Cuba has even been forced to import sugar, long its signature national crop. Some crime exists — muggings and burglaries — but rarely against foreign visitors. More troubling is widespread, low-level corruption. Less conspicuously, upper-level Communist Party cadres are quietly sacked for larger economic crimes. To be fair, some fundamental revolutionary promises are honored. Education from grade school through university and medical care are still free. Infant mortality is low compared to other Caribbean and developing-world countries. Since my last visit in 2011, many high-rise apartments now have window air conditioning units. Rent remains free, or nearly free. Counting urban squatters and shanty town dwellers, homelessness is virtually nonexistent. But as one Cuban observed, 'the misery is inside the rooms.' Yet a new candor also exists, thanks partly to social media, which has pierced the government's information bubble. Cubans everywhere acknowledge bleak times. They freely state their criticisms, requesting only anonymity. While acknowledging the U.S. embargo, which continues to constrict and damage, people from top to bottom frankly told me hard times require structural economic reform. The economy stays afloat — if barely — thanks to foreign remittances and an incrementally growing private sector, referred locally as the 'gray market,' so far concentrated in family-owned restaurants, boutique hotels and small shops. In travel-related services, some former government officials can exponentially multiply their income as tour guides. But the state still resists change. One well-travelled, former high-ranking diplomat compared the current economic leadership's tone-deaf response to the current crisis to Mad Magazine mascot Alfred E. Neuman: 'What, me worry?' So, with the Cuban people on the ropes, a question for U.S. policy makers: Why don't you pick on somebody your own size? For 65 years, successive American administrations have tried, to no avail, to overthrow Cuba's Communist regime — through invasion, assassination attempts, an embargo and draconian sanctions. Now facing a hostile Trump administration and Cuban American Secretary of State Marco Rubio, long hostile to the Havana regime, relations could further deteriorate. Emigration, the pressure-cooker release valve, and governmental repression diminish the likelihood of domestic political upheaval. The Cuban people, indomitable, will survive, but they should be the ones to decide their form of government. Successive U.S. administrations have supported and continue to liaise with far more repressive regimes. We even have cordial commercial and military relations with former enemy communist Vietnam, which now hosts what some have termed American sweat shops and where U.S. Navy ships often call. As if to exacerbate Cuban-American relations, the Trump administration has plans to settle 30,000 refugees at the Guantanamo U.S. Naval base, at a cost of $40 million. A current Washington rumor is that the Trump administration is about to cut off all U.S. travel to and from Cuba, including by Cuban Americans. Could my recent flight to the island be among the last? U.S. cash remittances, amounting to just under $4 billion in 2024, would be banned, further crippling the economy. Already, the Trump administration has tightened visa restrictions on Cuban athletes, medical personnel and their families. Still, change from within is possible. As another of mystery writer Padura's characters observes, 'This island's historical mission is always to be starting afresh, to make a new beginning every thirty or forty years.' Mark I. Pinsky is a Durham, N.C.-based journalist and author. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
27-04-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
A visit to Cuba reveals stasis, inequality and desperation
In the late 1990s, acclaimed Cuban mystery writer Leonardo Padura captured the poignant resignation of those who chose to stay on the island, enduring hardships following both the Cuban Revolution and the Soviet Union's collapse. Padura's main character, Mario Conde, is a hard-boiled police detective who disdains ideology (despite majoring in 'dialectical materialism' at university), observing in 'Havana Red' that the city 'still retains some of its magic, as if it had an invincible poetic spirit.' Described as a noirish 'tropical Marlowe,' Padura wrote about the 'Special Period,' Fidel Castro's name for the years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Russia had been a strong supporter of the regime, trading it underpriced oil for overpriced sugar. This gritty angst that Padura described only increased after Russia cut support. For Cubans here, times are difficult — sometimes desperate. The economy is a mess. 'Life here is very, very hard,' one hears over and over. 'La lu c ha,' the daily struggle for economic survival, obsesses average people. Consider those who are not young or entrepreneurial or who lack access to family capital from Miami. For them, Cuba's sputtering transition from command-socialism to a mixed-market economy invites a steady exodus. In 2022 alone, 250,000 Cubans (of 11.2 million residents) left the island. Among those ill-equipped for the change is Padura's police lieutenant, Conde. In the latest mystery, 'The Transparency of Time,' he is now retired from the force, wearily approaching 60 and trying to survive as a private investigator, 'in a country whose newly cosmopolitan worship of money has made him more of a skeptic than ever,' in 'a society so focused on regimenting ethical, political, and social behaviors.' Havana, the detective observes, 'functioned as a mirror of a country whose foundation was also cracking, conquered by the weight of time, apathy, and a history of exhaustion.' And yet, like most Cubans, he stays. Fuel shortages and power outages are producing regular local and nationwide blackouts, including one recently during my fourth visit to Cuba since 1978. Food at state-operated supermarkets can be scarce. Rationing barely helps. Island tourism — down 50 percent since 2017 — suffered from Covid's unmerciful battering. Oceanside hotels, some brand new, are largely vacant. Crumbling Old Havana buildings are neither preserved nor restored. Daytime tourists attract street peddlers, musicians and beggars, replaced at night with sex workers. Sections of the Contemporary Art Museum are roped off due to lack of staff. Havana's public transportation system barely exists. Many revolutionary-era billboards are fading. Class stratification and social inequality, both roughly along racial lines, have returned, despite the revolution's goals. Since 2018, Cuba has even been forced to import sugar, long its signature national crop. Some crime exists — muggings and burglaries — but rarely against foreign visitors. More troubling is widespread, low-level corruption. Less conspicuously, upper-level Communist Party cadres are quietly sacked for larger economic crimes. To be fair, some fundamental revolutionary promises are honored. Education from grade school through university and medical care are still free. Infant mortality is low compared to other Caribbean and developing-world countries. Since my last visit in 2011, many high-rise apartments now have window air conditioning units. Rent remains free, or nearly free. Counting urban squatters and shanty town dwellers, homelessness is virtually nonexistent. But as one Cuban observed, 'the misery is inside the rooms.' Yet a new candor also exists, thanks partly to social media, which has pierced the government's information bubble. Cubans everywhere acknowledge bleak times. They freely state their criticisms, requesting only anonymity. While acknowledging the U.S. embargo, which continues to constrict and damage, people from top to bottom frankly told me hard times require structural economic reform. The economy stays afloat — if barely — thanks to foreign remittances and an incrementally growing private sector, referred locally as the 'gray market,' so far concentrated in family-owned restaurants, boutique hotels and small shops. In travel-related services, some former government officials can exponentially multiply their income as tour guides. But the state still resists change. One well-travelled, former high-ranking diplomat compared the current economic leadership's tone-deaf response to the current crisis to Mad Magazine mascot Alfred E. Neuman: 'What, me worry?' So, with the Cuban people on the ropes, a question for U.S. policy makers: Why don't you pick on somebody your own size? For 65 years, successive American administrations have tried, to no avail, to overthrow Cuba's Communist regime — through invasion, assassination attempts, an embargo and draconian sanctions. Now facing a hostile Trump administration and Cuban American Secretary of State Marco Rubio, long hostile to the Havana regime, relations could further deteriorate. Emigration, the pressure-cooker release valve, and governmental repression diminish the likelihood of domestic political upheaval. The Cuban people, indomitable, will survive, but they should be the ones to decide their form of government. Successive U.S. administrations have supported and continue to liaise with far more repressive regimes. We even have cordial commercial and military relations with former enemy communist Vietnam, which now hosts what some have termed American sweat shops and where U.S. Navy ships often call. As if to exacerbate Cuban-American relations, the Trump administration has plans to settle 30,000 refugees at the Guantanamo U.S. Naval base, at a cost of $40 million. A current Washington rumor is that the Trump administration is about to cut off all U.S. travel to and from Cuba, including by Cuban Americans. Could my recent flight to the island be among the last? U.S. cash remittances, amounting to just under $4 billion in 2024, would be banned, further crippling the economy. Already, the Trump administration has tightened visa restrictions on Cuban athletes, medical personnel and their families. Still, change from within is possible. As another of mystery writer Padura's characters observes, 'This island's historical mission is always to be starting afresh, to make a new beginning every thirty or forty years.'
New York Times
27-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Paul Mpagi Sepuya's Photos Reverberate With Scenes of Their Own Making
In Paul Mpagi Sepuya's new photographs, there is no mistaking where we are: Camera tripods stand like machinic bodies, studio lights cast their lurid shine upon things, and the walls are busy with what appear to be the artist's photo prints. The fourth wall between the photographer's studio and the art gallery has come down, and we are peering into the womb from which images are born. Such disclosures are the animating principle behind the 13 photographs on view in 'Trance,' Sepuya's second show at Bortolami Gallery in TriBeCa. Shot with digital cameras, Sepuya's scenes depict the process of image-making, revealing his world of cameras, curtains and other equipment. Sepuya also turns his incisive lens upon the realm his pictures enter once they leave the studio; seven images in the show were taken in the very gallery in which they are on display. Our own space of viewing is reflected back at us. Sepuya, 43, became a force in the photo world after the 2019 Whitney Biennial. He is known for his meticulous interrogation of photography, using myriad techniques to explore how images are constructed — an inquiry that leads, ultimately, to an exploration of seeing itself. Mirrors and other reflective surfaces mediate the view of the camera, opening up a world of layered reflections. In 'Photographing (DSF4950),' a man reflected in a mirror holds a camera to his eye, and it is as if we are being photographed; a sliver of his back is shown in another mirror. On the wall behind him is a framed photograph by Sepuya in which a pair of embracing arms holds another camera, creating an echo of images inside images. The result, which demands a visual deciphering that is both delightful and maddening, recalls art-historical traditions, including Velázquez's celebrated 'Las Meninas,' in which the king and queen of Spain, whom the artist is painting, appear in a mirror behind him. It also calls to mind contemporary work, like Jeff Wall's 'Picture for Women,' which shows Wall at work in his studio gazing at the subject he is photographing. But Sepuya's images do more than invite the viewer behind the scenes. They become an instrument with which the artist, with forensic precision and delicate vulnerability, dissects the inner life of his medium. Sepuya's previous work in the Whitney Biennial, as well as his 2019 solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, lavished attention on the body and its expressions of queer desire (in particular, his own body in intimate positions with friends and lovers). In 'Trance,' however, many of the photographs seem to be absent of people. At times, this specificity of attention, to the medium of photography, can begin to feel repetitive and limited. But the mystery in Sepuya's photographs keeps this seriality interesting. For example, when Sepuya's body does come into view, his presence is uncertain. In 'Night Studio Mirror (DSF1073),' Sepuya makes use of double exposure, rendering the contours of his body a blurred rush. In 'Gallery Mirror (DSCF1114),' 'Gallery Gazing Ball' and 'Gallery Gazing Ball Negative,' shot inside Bortolami, we see only his hands. Elsewhere, he appears as a barely discernible reflection. The artist's presence becomes an unstable fact, or even an unresolvable question. Another clever and strange optical contrivance recurs in 'Trance': mirrored gazing balls. In them, we glimpse distended, fish-eye-like reflections of the studio or the gallery, redoubling and widening our view. It is almost as if we've gained a third eye. In 'Gazing Ball Position 02 (DSF2658)' and 'Gallery Gazing Ball Negative,' the balls sit atop tripods, as if ready to capture us. It's an almost uncanny substitution: It seems this other device for looking has usurped the camera. 'Gallery Gazing Ball Negative,' which depicts the empty interior of Bortolami and its cavernous reflection in the gazing ball, involves another kind of revelation: the photographic negative. Here, and in three other negative images in the show, Sepuya brings to the surface the technical foundations that lie beneath the developed picture. The triumph of the show is 'Studio Mirror Diptych (DSF3596 ),' an architectonic photo-installation mounted on a wheeled frame called a mobile flat, a device Sepuya often uses to mount mirrors in his studio. A series of self-reflexive maneuvers unfolds from there: A mobile flat almost identical to one in the gallery appears in the right panel of the diptych, as if the very object before us lives in the image itself. This view is reflected in a free-standing mirror in the left panel. The entire scene is shot in a different mirror, textured with smudges and dirt, in which we see part of Sepuya's reflection behind the camera. In this diptych the construction of the image and its reception — the studio and the gallery — bleed together. The universe inside the frame and the one beyond its edge seem to swallow each other, and the act of looking at an image slowly folds into the feeling of being a part of it.
