Queloides: Race and Racism in Cuban Contemporary Art

The 8th Floor is pleased to announce Queloides: Race and Racism in Cuban Contemporary Art, an exhibition protesting the resurgence of racism in Cuba. This exhibition is part of a citywide festival of Cuban art and culture called Sí Cuba!.

The thirteen artists featured in Queloides—Pedro Álvarez, Manuel Arenas, Belkis Ayón, María Magdelena Campos-Pons, Roberto Diago, Alexis Esquivel, Armando Mariño, René Peña, Marta María Pérez Bravo, Roberto Diago, Doulgas Pérez, Elio Rodriguez, Meira Marrero, and José Toirac—offer a revisionist, critical reading of the history of Cuba that highlights the contributions of the Africans and their descendants towards the formation of the Americas in general, and the Cuban nation in particular.

The concept of Queloides has evolved since it was shown at the Wifredo Lam Center for Contemporary Art in Cuba and most recently at Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, however, it builds on an ongoing project that began in Havana in 1997. Started by a group of artists and intellectuals, the project is a statement by a generation exposing increasingly racist attitudes in a society that maintains racial equality as part of the official discourse. The current iteration, which is curated by Alejandro de la Fuente and Elio Rodriguez, is a collaborative project between Mattress Factory and the University of Pittsburgh's Center of Latin American Studies.

The 8th Floor welcomes this exhibit to the New York metro area, home to the second largest Cuban population living off the island.

Queloides has been exhibited at the Centro de Cultura Contemporánea Wifredo Lam (Havana, April 16 - May 31, 2010) and at Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh, October 15, 2010 - February 27, 2011).

Press Release

Queloides Project Website

Queloides: Race and Racism in Cuban Contemporary Art was made possible by generous support from the Christopher Reynolds Foundation, Inc., Atlantic Philanthropies, Ford Foundation, Lambent Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Pennsylvania Humanities Council, The Pittsburgh Foundation, and the University of Pittsburgh's CRDF, CLAS, UCIS, Humanities Center, World History Center and the Dean of Arts and Sciences.

Painting the World Red

If all times and places have a particular art form associated with them, Burtt Ehrlich noted, “Chinese propaganda posters were the art of their age.” The 8th Floor is pleased to present Painting the World Red, an exhibition of over 40 posters from the private collection of Burtt Ehrlich. Curated by Benno Weiner, PhD candidate in History at Columbia University, Painting the World Red will run February 4th-28th, 2011.

Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (1949), propaganda posters have been an inseparable part of Chinese daily life. Produced by some of the leading artists of their time, their purpose was to educate, mobilize and inspire a largely illiterate population. Although working within a mandate to depict the world not as it was but “as it ought to be,” these artists created original works of art that stand among the most important Chinese cultural productions of their era.

On a trip to Shanghai five years ago, Ehrlich first became interested in these images. Initially attracted by the political content, in particular the anti-American, anti-imperialist imagery displayed in many of the posters, he began his collection. This eventually brought him to Yang Peiming, founder of the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Centre and leading expert on the subject. With Yang's help, over the next several years Mr. Ehrlich would go on to acquire what is believed to be the largest and most wide-ranging collection of Mao-era propaganda posters in the United States. In addition to posters from Ehrlich's collection, the exhibit includes items generously loaned from the personal collection of Mike Ungaro.

Press Release

Recent Acquisitions

Shelley and Donald Rubin began acquiring Cuban art in 2008. The collection quickly grew and as of 2010 is comprised of almost 400 contemporary works. Cuban art expands the scope of the Rubins’ collection while maintaining a commitment to the preservation of cultures and to art that inspires appreciation for sacred and isolated places around the world.

Recent Acquisitions encompasses three decades of work by some of Cuba's foremost artists, the majority of whom still live on the island. Employing various mediums and methods that range from the dramatically tactile sculpture of Alejandro Aguilera to the repurposed bus window donning neon lotto numbers and aluminum foil by Alberto Casado, many of the artists take inspiration from what the environment—literally, culturally and politically— provides them. The rich and varied visual vocabulary the artists employ reflects the multi-cultural and diverse ethnic make up of Cuba’s population. Recent Acquisitions provides just a small taste of Cuban cultural expression and celebrates these artists and their significant contributions.