(Art)Xiomas – CUBAAHORA: The Next Generation

  • Visual arts
  • Washington, D.C.
  • Thu, June 09 —
    Sun, August 07, 2016
(Art)Xiomas – CUBAAHORA: The Next Generation

The OAS AMA | Art Museum of the Americas and SPAIN arts & culture present (Art)xiomas – CUBAAHORA: the Next Generation, an art exhibition that displays the work of 15 Cuban contemporary young artists.

Curated by Cuban art historian Gabriela García Azcuy, (Art)xiomas is part of the CUBAAHORA: the Next Generation initiative, a program supported by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), and currently funded by the Friends of the Art Museum of the Americas, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the Permanent Observer Mission of Spain to the OAS, and SPAIN arts & culture.

These 15 Cuban artists are favoring fresh aesthetics while recognizing historical contexts, and their discourses are more autobiographical than politically contextualized. Exhibition participants shy away neither from committing themselves to projects with cultural institutions nor to working independently. Thus they penetrate and overcome barriers that for too long have characterized the timeline of Cuban cultural cooperation.(Art)Xiomas includes painting, engraving, photography, sculpture, design, and video art by talented young artists.

The meaning of axiom is a self-evident truth. These recent graduates of Cuba’s University of the Arts, now in their 30’s, face their realities with a new gaze, free of political elements that nonetheless penetrate their works.

(Art)xiomas was conceived to be an evolving project, malleable to new participants across a series of stagings at museums and cultural institutions, allowing the exhibitions to mutate as they travel, assuming fresh voices in dialogue with one another as well as with audiences. Artists reconcile their independently managed studios and work with government cultural organizations and international galleries and institutions. (Art)xiomas artists have largely abandoned normative conceptual approaches and utopian statements, loading their work with intimately individual languages.

(Art)Xiomas will open at AMA on June 9, 2016 after its debut at the CCEMiami on November 12, 2015. The OAS AMA will be presenting a larger, site-specific edition featuring 15 artists: Adriana Arronte, Ariamna Contino, Adrian Fernandez, Alex Hernandez, Frank Mujica, Osmeivy Ortega, Jorge Otero, Mabel Poblet, Lisandra Ramirez, Adislen Reyes, Roger Toledo, Gustavo del Valle, and recently added participants Josuhe Pagliery, Grethell Rasúa and Harold García. This edition of (Art)xiomas includes installation art, video, photography, sculpture, painting, performance, among others.

A half century ago, another fresh-faced Cuban impassioned by the arts planted the seeds of what is today considered among world’s finest collections of modern and contemporary Latin American and Caribbean art. José Gómez-Sicre took the reins of the OAS’s art program, thrusting himself head-on into the rapidly expanding Latin American art world, bringing young and emerging talent to the OAS’s budding exhibition space. AMA and Spain will be celebrating the centennial of Gómez-Sicre’s birth throughout 2016, honoring his contribution to the legacy of art of the Hemisphere, as well as that of his home country of Cuba.

This exhibition at OAS-AMA reflects recent outcomes in US-Cuban relations and the 2009 OAS General Assembly decision revoking the 1962 resolution which excluded the Government of Cuba from its participation in the inter-American system. The 2009 resolution states that the participation of Cuba in the OAS will be the result of a dialogue initiated at the request of the Government of Cuba, and in accordance with the practices and principles of the OAS.

In addition to the exhibit, AMA is planning a symposium on September 15, 2016, that will seek to juxtapose Gómez Sicre’s promotion of Cuban art beginning with the 1944 publication, Cuban Painting of Today, which was part of MoMA’s Modern Cuban Painters exhibition, and the efforts scholars, modern and contemporary art museums and other institutions, both in Cuba and the United States, are doing today to support and promote contemporary Cuban art.

Opening reception on Thursday, June 9 from 6 to 8 pm. Free admission, RSVP required.

Venue

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Art Museum of the Americas of the OAS, 201 18th St, Washington, DC 20006

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AMA

Credits

Presented by AMA | Art Museum of the Americas of the OAS. With the support of SPAIN arts & culture, the Friends of the Art Museum of the Americas, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, and the Permanent Observer Mission of Spain to the OAS. Image by Jorge Otero, series War Hero (2013).

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