Lo que es, es lo que ha sido/What It Is, Is What Has Been: Selections from the ASU Art Museum’s Cuban Art Collection

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Lo que es, es lo que ha sido/What It Is, Is What Has Been: Selections from the ASU Art Museum’s Cuban Art Collection explores artistic expression during times of humanitarian crises and social upheaval. The exhibition is the first major curatorial collaboration between Phoenix Art Museum and Arizona State University Art Museum (ASU Art Museum) in more than a decade and draws from the contemporary Cuban art collection at ASU Art Museum to provide deeper context to PhxArt’s simultaneous presentation of the special-engagement exhibition Juan Francisco Elso: Por América, a project organized by El Museo del Barrio in New York City.

IMAGE CREDIT

Sandra Ramos, From the Series Migrations II [Swimming under the Stars], 1994. Oil on suitcase. Collection of ASU Art Museum. Gift of the ASU Art Museum Advisory Board 100% +Cuban Campaign. Photography by Craig Smith. (Header)

The story continues with Lo que es, es lo que ha sido/What It Is, Is What Has Been: Selections from the ASU Art Museum’s Cuban Art Collection, which features ASU Art Museum’s most iconic artworks created during the period immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union. Termed Cuba’s “Special Period in a Time of Peace” by then-president Fidel Castro, the early 1990s through the mid-2000s on the island were marred by severe food and material shortages caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union and its financial subsidies, along with the persistence of trade embargoes enacted by the United States since the early 1960s. As a result, thousands of Cuban refugees fled in 1993–1994, at the height of the crisis, on makeshift rafts across the treacherous straits between Cuba and the United States.

IMAGE CREDIT

Tonel, El vomito es cultura, 1998. Watercolor, brush & black ink, and colored pencil. Collection of ASU Art Museum. Gift of the Bacardi Art Foundation, Miami and the ASU Art Museum Advisory Board 100% Cuban Campaign. Photography by Craig Smith.

Along with providing a glimpse into the past, Lo que es, es lo que ha sido/What It Is, Is What Has Been additionally explores the way Cuban artists today continue to grapple with issues of governmental control, economic failure, and censorship that likewise characterized the island’s Special Period. This is the subject of Reynier Leyva Novo’s monumental portrait of the Cuban national hero, José Marti, which is currently on view on the main floor of the Museum’s Katz Wing. The work’s title, Lo que es, es lo que ha sido (What it is, is what has been), provides the inspiration for the title of the larger exhibition and links the recent past to the present moment. In conversation, Novo’s work, Por América, and the exhibition featuring work from the ASU Art Museum take on more universal significance, particularly when viewed through the lens of global tumult and social change in a rapidly shifting world.

IMAGE CREDIT

Jacqueline Brito Jorge, Adaptaciones (pies), 1996. Acrylic on canvas with shells and fish fins. Collection of ASU Art Museum. Gift of the Artist. Photography by Craig Smith.