The Beginnings
The Beginnings
Writer and visual artist Ana Mendieta (1948–1985) and multidisciplinary artist Leandro Soto (b. 1956) were the pioneers of Cuban performance art.
Mendieta, an Operation Pedro Pan child who had been involved with performance art in the US and Mexico since the mid 1970s, traveled to Cuba for the first time since her departure in 1980. During that trip, she explored the possibilities of performing her work in Cuba. She connected with several artists who would be part of the Volumen I exhibit in 1981, the very same year that she returned, sponsored by the Cuban Ministry of Culture. In December, she was able to do Esculturas rupestres (Rupestrian Sculptures), a body earth performance series in Jaruco, at the Escaleras de Jaruco outside of Havana, with the assistance of artists interested in Afro Cuban traditions and indigenous cultures such as Soto, José Bedia (b. 1959), and Gustavo Pérez-Monzón. (You can start the Ana Mendieta media path here.)
From 1977 to 1980 Soto was in Cienfuegos using materials from his environment and exploring traces of different cultures in what he called “plastic actions.” Like Mendieta’s pieces, these prototypes of performance art questioned institutional spaces for the making and validation of art and underscored the need to document both the process and the event. At the same time (1977-1980), Leandro Soto, credited to be the first one in Cuba to work in this genre, was working in Cienfuegos following two inter-related lines of research: 1) the use of common objects and materials from his environment in art, and 2) a re-evaluation of traces of different cultures and their artistic transformation. He was able to merge these two lines in what he called “plastic actions,” a precursor of performance art. Integral to these “actions” was a questioning of institutional spaces for the making and validation of art (Cienfuegos as opposed to Havana and the seashore or neighborhood as opposed to a museum or gallery) as well as the need to document both the process and the event themselves. The photographs/traces of these performances were included in Volumen I. Though the remapping of an alternative cultural past did not go well with the more conservative cultural policy makers, these “plastic actions” found a space in the theater sphere where they were used of a mode of actors training. (Soto’s legacy to the transformation of 1980s theatrical language in Cuba remains understudied.)
These plastic actions and other types of performance art continued to flourish during the 1980s. Some were humorous and feisty, such as Consuelo Castañeda’s work with Hexágono (1982-84) in which they collectively created small pieces involving the landscape of Viñales, for example. As she suggests, although the photographs as residual objects entered the galleries, the process of creation and the actions themselves were the most important aspect.FN2 Gustavo Pérez Monzón in his Guanabo beach house served as a magnet as well as philosophical and artistic leader for a number of these artists. Towards the second half of this decade, performance artists drastically changed two characteristics of their predecessors: the focus on the formal/aesthetic elements and a reduced audience.
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