By Belén Mateos
The Cuban artist Hamlet Lavastida (Havana, 1983) has been the winner of the fourth edition of the Idealist Contemporary Art Award 2022 thanks to your project Penitentiary Republic . The creator will show his award-winning project at the stand that the real estate company is exhibiting at the upcoming Madrid Real Estate Fair (SIMA) until May 29.
Penitentiary Republic is a reflection that focuses on certain notions of ideological language within the Cuban context. Issues such as cultural policy, design, public sphere, archaeology and historiography They are approached from different media such as video, collages, performances, public interventions and installations.
For Lavastida, his work "has to do with a fundamental thesis: historical memory . It deals with understanding Cuban history, but also its connections to the world of socialism, the Soviet Union , and all the ties that are evident in the memory of Cuban socialism itself. It also seeks to speak about the Cuban government, which has been in place for almost 70 years, and to combat cultural stereotypes that don't reflect reality. Within the cultural field, the repression has been vast and harsh, and someone has to comment on it. I do it from an artistic perspective; I think it's a way of creating a visual essay on those other stories that have yet to be told or announced."
The exhibition, curated by Elisa Hernando and coordinated by Arte Global, consists of 21 illustrations of a selection of architectural structures used by the penitentiary system administered by the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) to confine the prison population in Cuba. This includes not only common crimes but also the penitentiary centers where the Cuban regime has incarcerated political prisoners, artists, intellectuals and cultural figures critical of the regime for the last six decades. Lavastida unwittingly developed this project and was ultimately imprisoned in 2021 in one of those centers , in retaliation for his public exposure as an artist demanding the opening of rights and freedoms in Cuba.
Hamlet Lavastida (Havana, 1983) is one of the most recognized Cuban artists in the field of international contemporary art and One of the most influential artists in his native country , he studied at the San Alejandro National Academy of Fine Arts (Havana, 1998–2002) and the Higher Institute of Art (Havana, 2003–2009), as well as the Chair of Conduct Art (Havana, 2004–2006).
Three months arrested
Since 2018, she joined the group of artists who rejected the operation and implementation of Decree 349, approved by the Cuban regime to increase control over all cultural activities and preserve the Cuban state's ideological monopoly on all types of cultural activity. Lavastida joined the artists organized around the SIN349 group, which also demanded the repeal of this same decree. She later subscribed to the civic and cultural demands of the 27N group, as expressed in their manifesto. This group emerged when a group of artists and intellectuals demonstrated on November 27, 2020, in front of the Ministry of Culture in Havana in support of the MSI, a group of artists and intellectuals who were on a hunger strike to demand civil liberties and rights in Cuba.
In June 2021, Lavastida was detained upon returning to Havana after participating in the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien artist residency (Germany). Upon his arrival, he was arrested because, according to the Cuban government, "he had repeatedly incited and called for actions of civil disobedience in public spaces, using social media and direct influence over other counterrevolutionary elements." In fact, Lavastida had proposed, in a private Telegram group, to carry out an artistic performance by marking legal tender banknotes with the slogan "Homeland and Life."
An idea that the artists who were part of the group discarded and only became known when the Cuban government justified with this proposal the arrest and imprisonment of Lavastida at the headquarters of the Specialized Criminal Investigation Agency for Crimes against State Security, commonly known as Villa Marista. There he was charged with instigation to commit a crime for which He was imprisoned for three months . His release was conditional on his departure to Europe as an exile along with the writer, poet, and activist Katherine Bísquet .
Lavastida received enormous international support during his imprisonment. Organizations such as Human Rights Watch, PEN America, and PEN International condemned his arrest and demanded his immediate release. Dozens of Cuban and international creators, artists, and intellectuals also supported Lavastida during his imprisonment: Carlos Garaicoa , Leandro Feal , Juan Miguel Pozo , Coco Fusco or the German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig , among others.
Hamlet Lavastida, (Havana, 1983) has exhibited in institutions and museums such as Documenta in Kassel (2022), the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid (2022), Kunstlerhaus Bethanien (2021), the OO Biennial, Havana (2018), the ARTIUM museum in Vitoria (2015), the Liverpool Biennial and the 7th Gwangju Biennale (2008).
The Cuban artist Hamlet Lavastida (Havana, 1983) has been the winner of the fourth edition of the Idealist Contemporary Art Award 2022 thanks to your project Penitentiary Republic . The creator will show his award-winning project at the stand that the real estate company is exhibiting at the upcoming Madrid Real Estate Fair (SIMA) until May 29.
Penitentiary Republic is a reflection that focuses on certain notions of ideological language within the Cuban context. Issues such as cultural policy, design, public sphere, archaeology and historiography They are approached from different media such as video, collages, performances, public interventions and installations.
The Idealist Prize for Contemporary Art is an initiative of the marketplace A leading real estate agency in Spain, Italy, and Portugal, the company aims to recognize the talent and vision of young creators and seek to promote and support contemporary artistic production. In its first edition, in 2018, the award went to the Basque artist. Ismael Iglesias (Durango 1974), with the work Streetfighter ; the second, in 2019, was won by the Huesca artist David Latorre with his project Architecture, Body and Clothing ; in 2020 there was no call due to the pandemic, but in 2021 it won the award. Jorge Yeregui by Communities .
Idealista has been supporting national and international artists for years, promoting contemporary art production by acquiring works of art that reflect the impact of urban planning on people's lives. Its collection includes pieces by artists such as Panos Kokkinias (Athens, Greece, 1965), Teresa Margolles (Culiacán, Mexico, 1963), Maider López (San Sebastian, Spain, 1975), Olaf Breuning (Schaffhausen, Switzerland, 1970) or Massimo Vitali (Como, Italy, 1944). The works are part of a traveling tour between the company's offices in Barcelona, Lisbon, Madrid, Malaga, and Milan. To create the idealista Prize and coordinate the award in future editions, idealista has selected Elisa Hernando, director of Global Art, who curated the intervention Hamlet Lavastida performs at SIMA Madrid.
