Cuban Artists’ Books and Prints 1985 - 2008
Opening Reception: Thursday, Sept. 24, 5:30- 7:30pm
Symposium: Archipelago of Dreams: Cuban Culture, History, and the Business of Art 1-5pm, Brendle Recital Hall, Scales Fine Arts Center

The exhibition Cuban Artists’ Books and Prints coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution (2009), but the works’ intense independence reveals a creative resilience and imaginative power to negotiate the political, social, and cultural difficulties and paradoxical privileges ruling the artists’ careers for the past two decades. The painters, photographers, sculptors, printmakers, multimedia artists, writers, and artisans represented express their experiences in a country that survived the evaporation of the Soviet Union and, with it, the subsidies that supported their economy. These works reflect creative responses from romantic reverie, nostalgia, humor, sarcasm, and irony. The exhibition will contain approximately 130 books and objects.

The exhibition has been developed with intensive student participation developing bilingual catalog, promotional and educational materials for an interdisciplinary program that will represent Wake Forest University on a regional, national, and international level. In addition, WFU professors and students will create an interactive, bilingual website that will allow the community to learn more about the world in which Cubans live.

WFU’s exhibition will feature an opening reception and one-day symposium that will enrich the audience’s experience of the show. A panel of experts on Latin American and Cuban culture will discuss how transformations like the Revolution and the disappearance of the Soviet Union shaped Cuban cultural production. They will talk about art bookmaking and community projects in Cuba, the state of the arts, Cuban art within the context of Caribbean and Latin American art, and the experiences of working artists in Cuba.

Barquitos del San Juan: la revista de los niños, El remanso de las aguas, Año 13, Nro. 23 (Little Boats of San Juan: Children’s Magazine, Still Waters, Year 13, No. 23), 2007

Roberto Manzano, La hilacha (The Shred of Cloth), 2006