Phoenix Art Museum and ASU Art Museum explore artistic expression in times of crisis through new joint exhibition featuring contemporary art of Cuba

Feb, 07, 2023

Exhibitions and Special InstallationsModern and Contemporary ArtLatin American Art

Phoenix Art Museum and ASU Art Museum explore artistic expression in times of crisis through new joint exhibition featuring contemporary art of Cuba

Lo que es, es lo que ha sido/What It Is, Is What Has Been, upcoming at PhxArt, complements Juan Francisco Elso: Por América with works drawn from the collection of ASU Art Museum

PHOENIX (February 7, 2023) – This spring, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) and Arizona State University Art Museum (ASU Art Museum) will co-present a new 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, the first major curatorial collaboration between the two institutions in more than a decade. The collaboration explores artistic expression during times of humanitarian crises and social upheaval while presenting a record of human experiences that will resonate across audiences of varying identities. The new exhibition 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, the first retrospective in more than 30 years of the late Cuban artist and a project organized by El Museo del Barrio in New York City. The two exhibitions will provide a deeper understanding of the social and political context in which Elso’s art emerged in 1980s Communist Cuba, in addition to the culture and political climate of post-Soviet Cuba in the decade following Elso’s death in 1988. PhxArt and ASU Art Museum will also partner to present community programs designed to engage visitors with these dynamic art works and bring greater visibility to the complex histories of migration in Cuba and Mexico. Both Juan Francisco Elso: Por América and Lo que es, es lo que ha sido/What It Is, Is What Has Been were curated by Olga Viso, a dual-appointee of PhxArt and ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. They will be on view from May 6 through September 17, 2023 at Phoenix Art Museum.

“As institutions, we often overlook the richness of shared expertise and resources within our own communities,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Sybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum. “Through this collaboration with the ASU Art Museum, Phoenix Art Museum has the opportunity to bring works by Cuban artists from ASU’s incredible collection to our galleries while partnering on a series of public programs to better understand the complexity of issues surrounding exile faced by Cuban artists. These exhibitions present a distinctive look at the impact of a singular artist and his place in art history, as well as how the Phoenix community has embraced and supported artists whose voices and artistic practices have been challenged by political establishments.”

“ASU Art Museum has a 25-year history of highlighting the work, voices, and perspectives of Cuban artists,” said Miki Garcia, director of ASU Art Museum. “Our partnership with PhxArt is a great opportunity to deepen our connection with the community. The artists in these exhibitions demonstrate how Cuban artists created a new visual culture—one that challenged the Soviet-era preference for art imbued with a political agenda and censorship. Cuban artists of the ’80s and ’90s experimented with both the materials they used and the messages they crafted. We see a mixture of conceptual art, folkloric themes, and institutional critiques that simultaneously shaped the new culture and served as a space to process the impact Communist ideologies had on artists’ sense of personal and communal identity.”

Curated by Olga Viso, in collaboration with Susanna V. Temkin, curator at El Museo del Barrio, Juan Francisco Elso: Por América provides a rare opportunity to experience Elso’s fragile extant works that draw influence from Indigenous Mesoamerican traditions, Afro-Caribbean religious beliefs, and the traumas of colonial oppression on contemporary Cuban, Caribbean, and Latin American identities. Elso’s sculptures and installations reveal a more expansive understanding of the Americas, free of geopolitical borders and nations, and likewise provide insight into the social and political context of 1980s Communist Cuba, a period that led up to the collapse of the Soviet Bloc and birthed the first generation of artists to be educated fully within a post-revolutionary system. These artists eventually emerged on an international stage and began to reflect critically on Cuban society. 

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.  

Works in Lo que es, es lo que ha sido/What It Is, Is What Has Been comment on the struggles of daily subsistence and the human experience during the “Special Period,” themes that are at once specific and relevant to communities who have faced exile and political repression across the globe. Highlights include:

• Kcho’s 1996 makeshift kayak perched on a precarious sea of bottles in Para Olvidar (In Order to Forget), a reference to the tragedy of the balseros, or rafters, in 1994, many of whom perished at sea in their attempt to secure freedom
• Sandra Ramos’s painted suitcase from her 1994-series Migrations II Swimming Under the Stars, depicting two figures traversing dark, open waters
• Aimee García Marrero’s 2002 sculpture Bajo Presión/Under Pressure of a pressure cooker, referencing women’s use of pots and pans as percussive objects in protests against widespread food shortages.

The exhibition also features works by Belkis Ayón, Luis Cruz Azaceta, Abel Barroso, Jacqueline Brito, Yamilys Brito, Los Carpinteros, Carlos Estévez, René Francisco, Luis Gomez, Filiberto Mora, Kadir Lopez Nieves, Fernando Rodríguez, and Tonel.

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 iconic portrait of Martí appears as a slumbering giant suspended in time. The work’s title, Lo que es, el 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 changing world.

“In 2018, Cuba established Decree 349, which legislates creative expression and imposes controls on artistic content,” said Olga Viso, a dual appointee of both Phoenix Art Museum and Arizona State University. “Artists who have protested these measures in recent years have been met with harsh governmental response and even imprisonment. As The New York Times recently reported, another mass exodus of Cuban citizens fleeing the island is underway. The title of this exhibition— Lo que es, es lo que ha sido/What It Is, Is What Has Been—not only echoes a common sentiment among the Cuban populace of making due with what lies ahead (it is what it is) but also poignantly acknowledges that very little has changed in regard to scarcity and civil liberties in Cuba since the ‘Special Period’ commenced more than 30 years ago.”

Juan Francisco Elso: Por América and Lo que es, es lo que ha sido/What It Is, Is What Has Been are exhibitions led by Olga Viso, senior curatorial advisor and curator-at-large at PhxArt and senior advisor at ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. Viso was joined by co-curator Julio César Morales, executive director and co-chief curator of MoCA Tucson, on Lo que es, lo que ha sido/What It Is, Is What Has Been. High-resolution photography for Lo que es, es lo que ha sido/ What It Is, Is What Has Been can be downloaded here. To request interviews, contact the Communications Office of Phoenix Art Museum at 602.257.2117 or samantha.santos@phxart.org. For the full news release on Juan Francisco Elso: Por América, click here.

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 is organized by Phoenix Art Museum and ASU Art Museum and curated by Olga Viso, curator-at-large at PhxArt and senior advisor at Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, and Julio César Morales, executive director and co-chief curator of MoCA Tucson. The exhibition is made possible through the generosity of the Museum’s Circles of Support and Museum Members.

Admission is free for Museum Members; veterans, active-duty military, and their immediate families; youth aged 5 and younger; and Maricopa County Community Colleges students. Entrance into the exhibition is included in general admission for the public. Visitors may also enjoy reduced admission to the exhibition during voluntary-donation times on Wednesdays from 3 – 9 pm, made possible by SRP and supported in part through the generosity of the Angela and Leonard Singer Endowment for Performing Arts. For a full breakdown of general-admission prices and hours, see phxart.org/visit/.

About Phoenix Art Museum
Since 1959, Phoenix Art Museum has provided millions of guests with access to world-class art and experiences in an effort to ignite imaginations, create meaningful connections, and serve as a brave space for all people who wish to experience the transformative power of art. Located in Phoenix’s Central Corridor, the Museum is a vibrant destination for the visual arts and the largest art museum in the southwestern United States. Each year, more than 300,000 guests engage with critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions and the Museum’s collection of more than 20,000 works of American and Western American, Asian, European, Latin American, modern and contemporary art, and fashion design. The Museum also presents a comprehensive film program, live performances, and educational programs designed for visitors of all ages, along with vibrant photography exhibitions made possible through the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. To learn more about Phoenix Art Museum, visit phxart.org, or call 602.257.1880.

About Arizona State University Art Museum and Cuban Art
The ASU Art Museum’s collection of contemporary Cuban art is distinguished by art produced on the island from the mid 1980s to the early 2000s and focuses on art made during a period in Cuban history known as the “Special Period.” The collection numbers over 250 objects in all media. The ASU Art Museum was one of the first art museums globally to collect Cuban art from this moment in depth and it continues to maintain one of the premier collections of art from this era.

The collection was assembled by the museum’s former chief curator and director Marilyn Zeitlin in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Zeitlin sought to build on the museum’s long-standing commitment to collecting Latin American art, especially from under-represented regions and communities. She also aimed to expand the museum’s holdings of Latin American prints and deepen the museum’s existing concentrations of political graphics documenting social movements. The Cuban Art Collection was both commissioned and acquired at ASU with the generous support of national foundations and local donors who sought to urgently respond to the hardship artists were experiencing. In the 1990s, the ASU Art Museum commissioned many of the artists presented here to produce a print portfolio. That series is on view concurrently in the Art in Focus gallery at the ASU Art Museum until September 2023. For more information, please visit asuartmuseum.asu.edu.