The National Museum of Matera at the Ex Ospedale di San Rocco is currently hosting the exhibition “Cuba introspettiva. Performative experiences of video art”, conceived and curated by Giacomo Zaza and artist Luis Gómez Armenteros.
The project moves between contexts that intertwine and meet: public and private space, the street and intimacy, the socio-cultural sphere and imaginary paths. It highlights the diversified development of Cuban artistic practices, untying them from any labelling. It emphasises the production of new meanings through performative video experiences.
The exhibition is organised through the video art experiences of twelve Cuban artists, protagonists of contemporary research on and off the island: Juan Carlos Alom, Analía Amaya, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Javier Castro, Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo, Luis Gómez Armenteros, Tony Labat, Ernesto Leal, Glenda León, Sandra Ramos, Grethell Rasúa and Lázaro Saavedra.
“The wide-ranging look at artistic research from Cuba, with particular attention to the protagonists of some of the most interesting visual experimentation in the Caribbean area,” emphasises Annamaria Mauro, director of the National Museum of Matera, “confirms the Museum’s openness to the international contemporary world. The monumental complex of the Ex Ospedale di San Rocco continues to be a laboratory for the exploration of today’s creativity, capable of offering shared imagery and experiences from different cultural spheres’.
“In the artists in the exhibition,” explains curator Giacomo Zaza, “a reflective vision prevails, imbued with ironic and paradoxical, rough and restless traits, as occurs in certain Cuban literature, from Virgilio Piñera to Pedro Juan Gutiérrez. A vision accompanied by the internalisation and sifting of history (with its drifts), as well as a scenario rich in syncretistic attitudes. Cuban video practice brings with it a marked performative drive. The artists chosen for Matera move between the founding values of experience (solidarity, the freedom of the individual) and the search for a poetic dimension and a sensitive space, almost courting the magical world’.
(from the press release)
Introspective Cuba. Performative experiences of video art, curated by Giacomo Zaza and artist Luis Gómez Armenteros
Ex Ospedale di San Rocco (Piazza San Giovanni, Matera), 22.03 – 30.06.2024
Artists: Juan Carlos Alom, Analía Amaya, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Javier Castro, Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo, Luis Gómez Armenteros, Tony Labat, Ernesto Leal, Glenda León, Sandra Ramos, Grethell Rasúa and Lázaro Saavedra
images: (cover 1) Lazaro Saavedra, «El sindrome de la sospecha», 2004 (2) Sandra Ramos, «Aquarium», 2013 (3) Javier Castro, «El beso de la patria», 2011 (4) Luis Gomez, «Armenteros Coartada Be there», 2012 (5) Juan Carlos, «Alom Habana Solo», 2000
