Cuba Now

As the art world flocks to Havana, a revolutionary gallery owner emerges as a key tastemaker

By KELLY CROW

Havana

This weekend, the art world is descending on Cuba for the 10th Havana Biennial to see new works from hundreds of young artists that are on display in the city's museums, crumbling colonial forts and baroque churches. Many art insiders will also make a stop at a space that's not on the biennial's roster: the living room of Sandra Ceballos.

Ms. Ceballos manages the country's oldest independent art space, one of the few galleries in Cuba not funded by government-controlled cultural institutions. Art professionals say her gallery, run out of her apartment, is nurturing some of the country's most cutting-edge local talent at a time when Cuba is positioning itself as the next hotbed for contemporary art. Ms. Ceballos was among the first to exhibit Cuban art stars like Carlos Garaicoa, Angel Delgado and Tania Bruguera, whose works are highly sought after by major institutions like the Tate Modern in London.

Behind her iron gate at Calle 6, No. 602 lies a little-seen Havana brimming with tattoo artists, punk rockers, and teenagers in T-shirts that read, "Viva el diversionismo ideologico." Right now, her rust-colored walls feature Orlando Silvera's pencil drawing of a clown, his mouth sewn shut by the word, "Cubano." A concrete patio is covered, graffiti-style, with the names of artists and curators who say they have been censored in Cuba over the years. Artist Luis Gárciga and others also papered a space in the living room with sticky notes listing Web sites that won't work in Cuba, like Generacion Y, Yoani Sánchez's blog about Havana life that often criticizes the Cuban government.

The works are part of her new exhibit, timed to coincide with the biennial, called "La Perra Subasta," or "The Auction of the Big Dog," a group show for artworks that contain letters or words.

Ben Rodriguez-Cubeñas, a collector who is chairman of the Cuban Artists Fund in New York, says he's planning to bring at least 40 of his art-world friends by Ms. Ceballos's house while he's in town for the biennial next week: "Everything she does is gutsy."

The fact that Ms. Ceballos has never been shut down is a source of great intrigue for Cuba-watchers around the world. Some say it signals a new tolerance by Raúl Castro, who has enacted a few reforms -- allowing cellphones, for example -- since taking over the country's leadership from his brother last year because of Fidel's failing health.

Others say she exercises just enough restraint to avoid real trouble. Cuban artist Glexis Novoa, who lives in Miami but often travels to Havana, says, "She knows that the government will try to deal with you and tolerate you, up to a limit."

In a country where the biggest art patron is the Cuban government, alternative art spaces that aren't on the state payroll are nearly nonexistent. Artists who want to exhibit here typically attend government art schools before vying for a coveted slot in Havana's handful of sanctioned galleries like Galeria Habana or the biennial, Cuba's biggest art event. Gallery owners and biennial curators say they are free to show whatever they like, but they tend to sidestep pieces that directly criticize the ruling Castro family or their policies. Ms. Ceballos, who mounts exhibits with the regularity of a seasoned art dealer, is only allowed by law to sell her own artwork, but she can help collectors contact other artists if they're interested in buying other works.

Her role is key because the demand for edgy Cuban art has skyrocketed lately. Prices can easily top $40,000 for work by stars like Kcho and Yoan Capote, who show in Cuba's sanctioned galleries as well as in U.S. and European galleries. The U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, in place since Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, allows Americans to buy Cuban art.

This week, at least 10 groups from museums like the Bronx Museum and El Museo del Barrio in New York secured humanitarian visas so they could fly into Havana. (The Bronx Museum delegation packed vitamins into their luggage to donate during their stay.) Major American collectors like Ron Pizzutti and Howard Farber have also come to town.

Cuban art is the main attraction at this week's biennial, though the official exhibitions feature over 300 artists from 54 countries in venues throughout the city. Crowds are expected to form around Humberto Diaz's faux tsunami, which he made by suspending wave-like strips of cloth from the roof of the Cuba Pavilion. The National Museum of Fine Arts also offers a crash course on 20th century Cuban art in "Resistencia y libertad: Wifredo Lam, Raúl Martínez y José Bedia," including an untitled 1964 abstract by Mr. Martínez that features a newspaper snapshot of the Commandante himself, Fidel Castro.

Ms. Ceballos's space, which she calls Aglutinador, or the Glue, comes under occasional fire from Cuba's cultural establishment. The biggest blowup occurred in October when the National Council of Visual Arts, a state agency that organizes the biennial and other major art events across Cuba, sent a mass email to its member artists denouncing her for spending time with human-rights activists and producing "propagandistic" shows, according to a copy of the email obtained by The Wall Street Journal. Ms. Ceballos denied the claims and her shows have continued.

A spokesman for Ruben del Valle Lanterón, the director of the National Council of Visual Arts, confirmed that one of its employees sent the email but said the controversy was overblown. Later, Mr. Lanterón said he believes alternative art spaces should be able to coexist with state-run institutions even if he doesn't always appreciate Ms. Ceballos's artistic choices. "In her early years she really rescued artists who weren't well acknowledged, and I respect that," Mr. Lanterón added.

Ms. Ceballos seems bored by her role in the debate: "I'm not interested in pushing the political. That's for politicians. I'm just interested in defending the artists." She says she neither seeks political art for shows nor filters it out.

The scene cultivated at Aglutinador is more irreverent than overtly political. Ms. Ceballos, age 48, is a petite woman who wears combat boots and has a tattoo on her arm of a comic-strip character, Salomon, who was censored from Cuba's papers years ago. She exudes the calm, organized demeanor of a den mother, yet she has a penchant for dying her hair fire-engine red. In a city where people confront layers of bureaucracy, artists say Ms. Ceballos likes to produce shows quickly and never questions the outlandish ideas they can foist on her home, from obscene doodles to artworks glued to her tree leaves. Coco Fusco, who now lives in the U.S., did a performance piece in 2000 that involved digging a waist-high pit into Ms. Ceballos's garden.

Typical gallery openings in New York last two hours, followed by fancy dinners for a chosen few. Last Saturday at Aglutinador, the opening lasted nine hours, with a steady stream of people filtering in and out. Ms. Ceballos's parents, who live next door, and her 8-year-old son, Oscar, mingled easily with a college crowd sporting nose rings. Some stayed for hours, hanging out under the patio's pink bougainvillea or cramming into the apartment's narrow living room or adjoining kitchen. At 11 p.m., Ms. Ceballos gently shooed everyone out so she could put her son to bed in the 10-foot-square loft bedroom they share above the living room.

Like many Cubans, she lives on a financial shoestring. Recently divorced, she has a monthly budget of around $100 a month, though it can cost up to $800 to produce her shows because it's expensive to get the art photographed and programs printed. She has received grants over the years from European nonprofits like the Prince Claus Fund in the Netherlands and Spain's Ministry of Culture, some of it configured so she can pass money on to younger Cuban artists who need support to finish art projects. She refuses to ask for money from the Cuban government so she can "stay independent."

She was born in 1961, two years after the revolution, in the eastern city of Guantánamo that gives its name to the U.S. military base nearby. By the time she graduated from the National Academy of Visual Arts San Alejandro in 1982, Cuba's art scene was undergoing its own revolution. Ms. Ceballos, then an emerging artist, watched unsanctioned art spaces sprouting in homes and unusual venues around town and she dove in. In 1989, she landed her first major show at the Castillo de la Fuerza with "Beauty and the Beast," a series of paintings made by lumping together masses of hospital sheets, sponges, blood and hair.

Shortly afterward, the end of Soviet oil subsidies in Cuba plunged Cuba into the economic crisis dubbed the "Special Period," and she struggled along with everyone else to get enough food to survive, often working by candlelight because there was no electricity. It was in these fraught times that she and her boyfriend at the time, artist Ezequiel Suarez, decided to start holding experimental art shows in their home. The first show in spring 1994, "Degenerate Art in the Era of the Market," paid homage to masters like Ernst Kirchner who were persecuted by the Nazis.

The show that created such a stir last fall began as an experiment to see if she could create an exhibit completely devoid of leadership. She invited a group of 25 artists to come to her home and display whatever they wanted, wherever they wanted, curator-free. The concept was a bit cerebral, so for pizzazz she titled the show, "Curadores Go Home!"

Two days before the show opened, she received the following unsigned email from the National Council of Visual Arts: "A propagandistic show with openly political ends has been programmed for next Saturday, October 18, 2008 in the 'Espacio Aglutinador.' .... We denounce the attempt to give artistic coverage to provocations of this nature. We regret that Sandra Ceballos goes along with the game of the servants of the empire."

She says she was floored. She quickly fired off a reply: "It is an embarrassment for the artists and everyone involved in the art world in Cuba to read texts so pretentious, decadent and unoriginal."

Emails began to crisscross among dozens of Cuban artists now living everywhere from Ecuador to Madrid to Miami. Ms. Fusco, in New York, started an online petition of support, and after two days it had 300-plus signatures. Ms. Ceballos, who had temporarily suspended the show, decided to go to the council instead and seek a meeting with Mr. Lanterón. She was led to his office.

The pair talked about her past accomplishments for a few minutes, and she left. She says she didn't get a satisfactory reason for the email or an apology. But ultimately it didn't matter. Several artists in her show backed out -- one because of the controversy, two because they suddenly had to take trips out of Havana -- but the rest stayed put.

The ordeal even inspired her latest piece, hanging now above her red sofa. It's a poster colored to look like the Cuban flag.

—Wilson Lievano contributed to this article.

New York, NY – A survey exhibition exploring the use of stitching and thread in contemporary art will be on view at LeilaTaghinia-Milani Heller (LTMH) Gallery from November 12 through December 19, 2009. IN STITCHES, curated by Beth Rudin DeWoody, will present works in various media by more than 50 U.S. and international contemporary artists.

IN STITCHES focuses on both well-known and emerging artists who incorporate stitching and thread as prominent features in the concept and structure of their work. The artists’ process includes wrapping and embroidery as well as assemblage. The exhibition title is a double entendre of the Shakespearean idiom, and now common expression, when one is laughing so hard that it causes physical pain. While some of the work presents elements of humor, other work explores the role of women in society or questions the threads or painful truths of our social and moral existence. Threads literally and metaphorically form the connections, which tie the artists’ works together.

The exhibition will include work by Ghada Amer, Ramazan Bayrakoglu, Louise Bourgeois, Nancy Brooks Brody, Ambreen Butt, David Byrne, Margarita Cabrera, Orly Cogan, Adam Cohen, Anita Cooke, Matthew Cox, E.V. Day, Lesley Dill, Chris Duncan, Alinka Echeverria, Tracey Emin, Angelo Filomeno, Robert Forman, Zoi Gaitanidou, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Guerra de la Paz, Selma Gürbüz, Joseph Heidecker, Kent Hendricksen, Todd Knopke, Steven & William Ladd, Mike Latham, Charles LeDray, Pooneh Maghazehe, Julia Mandle, Christian Marclay, Victoria May, Bradley McCallum & Jacqueline Tarry, Thomas McDonell, Darrel Morris, William J. O'Brien, Maria E. Piñeres, Elaine Reichek, Jacob Robichaux, Gulay Semercioglu, Donna Sharrett, Jean Shin, Chiharu Shiota, Kiki Smith, Devorah Sperber, Berend Strik, Marc Swanson, Frances Trombly, Vadis Turner, Paul Villinski, Andy Warhol, Debora Warner, Megan Whitmarsh, Rob Wynne, and Darius Yektai.

Beth Rudin DeWoody is a New York art collector and curator. She is the executive vice president of Rudin Management and on the board of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Creative Time, The New School, New Yorkers For Children, and the New York Police Foundation. Her other exhibitions include I Won't Grow Up at Cheim & Read, New York; Just What Are They Saying... at the Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans; What's Your Hobby? at The Fireplace Project, East Hampton, NY; A House Is Not A Home at Caren Golden Fine Art, New York; and Luxury Goods and It'll cost you... at Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts, New York.

http://www.nola.com/arts/index.ssf/2009/09/wonderful_art_at_the_uno_st_cl.html

The Jonathan Ferrara gallery is pleased to announce the jury winners for the 13th Annual NO DEAD ARTISTS Juried Exhibition of Louisiana Art Today. The show opens on Saturday September 5, 2009 with an artists' reception from 6 - 9pm. Each year the show draws attention to an emerging generation of contemporary artists who live and work in the state of Louisiana and celebrates its cultural resiliency.

For thirteen years, No Dead Artists has provided the art world with the opportunity to see innovative works being produced in Louisiana. The concept for No Dead Artists was initiated in 1995 by Jonathan Ferrara and Alex Beard to give a voice to emerging artists and help them gain recognition for their passion in life. Each year hundreds of artists submit their work to a jury of renowned arts professionals and noted collectors. Participation in the show has been a springboard for several artists leading to national recognition, museum and corporate acquisitions, and gallery representation. The exhibition has become an annual rite of fall and showcases the newest talents emerging in Louisiana today and beckons the opening of the art season. The opening draws thousands of art enthusiasts to the gallery.

The 2009 Jury Winners are:

May Babcock, Mary Beyt, Gabrielle A. Chapin, Yvette Creel, Amy Guidry, Ryan Watkins-Hughes, Erin Haldrup, Stephen Hoskins, Eleanor Owen Kerr, Katie Knoeringer, Adam Mysock, Jonathan Pellitteri, Dan Rule, Paige Valente and Sara White.

This year over 1000 works by over 200 artists were submitted to be juried. 25 works of art by 15 artists were chosen by the three prestigious jurors.

Miranda Lash: Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, New Orleans Museum of Art.

John Kemp, writer: ARTnews, Art & Antiques, American Artist, Louisiana Life and Managing Editor of

Louisiana Cultural Vistas.

Charles Whited: well-respected collector, New Orleans, LA.

The 2009 exhibition features painting, sculpture, mixed media, photography and video works by artists living and working in Louisiana. In addition to having their works exhibited at Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, selected jury winners will be featured in an article in the September 1st issue of The Gambit written by art critic, D. Eric Bookhardt.

The 13th Annual No Dead Artists, juried exhibition of Louisiana Art Today, opens to the public at Jonathan Ferrara Gallery 400a Julia Street, New Orleans, with a reception to meet the artists on Saturday, September 5, 2008, 6-10pm. The exhibition will be on view from September 2 – 26, 2009. For more information and images from No Dead Artists, please contact the Jonathan Ferrara gallery at 504-522-5471 or info@jonathanferraragallery.com.

Read the review from The Gambit by clicking here

U.S.-Cuba thaw in full swing in arts world

U.S.-Cuba thaw in full swing in arts world

Artist Profile: Matthew Cox

Cuba Now

As the art world flocks to Havana, a revolutionary gallery owner emerges as a key tastemaker

The Potential of Museum Partnerships, Part II

Sidonie Villere and W. Steve Rucker

PSFK Talks to NOLA Gallerist Jonathan Ferrara

Language-based art at Jonathan Ferrara Gallery can be hard to read

Posted by Doug MacCash, Art critic, The Times-Picayune February 12, 2009 5:00PM

When you think of mobile homes, the words "green" and "artist studio" don't necessarily jump to mind. But artist Paul Villinski, using found materials and a discarded trailer manages to do just that. Complete with nine solar panels, a 10-foot wide skylight, and a 40-foot high mast, it is purely incidental that the entire thing resembles a UFO, albeit, an inviting one.

To view the entire article:

http://www.metropolismag.com/pov/20090128/an-artful-response-to-disaster

Remember the Upstairs Lounge

"Maybe it's a sign of the times — or at least the frustrations of museum work. Or perhaps some sudden departures facilitate speedy arrivals elsewhere. In 1977 Marcia Tucker was fired from her curator's job at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Within months she had founded the New Museum, which she led for 22 years.

In 1995 Ms. Tucker hired Dan Cameron as senior curator. Late in 2005 he resigned from the New Museum, for reasons that remain unclear. In January 2006, after Mr. Cameron attended a forum on the cultural future of New Orleans, the idea of an international biennial in the city took root in his mind."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/arts/design/07smit.html

The Gabmit Weekly, "Jury Selections" Eric D. Bookhardt, September 2, 2008 "Time sure does fly. I can remember, albeit dimly, when Jonathan Ferrara, Alex Beard and others were attempting to organize the first No Dead Artists (NDA) show at an earlier gallery back in the mid-'90s, which from this perspective seems a truly bygone time. So much life-altering stuff has happened since then, from millennial shifts to killer terrorists to killer hurricanes, that the mid-'90s seems like another century " which, of course, it was, but I mean, like, really another century. So long ago that Anne Rice was still a hot gothic novelist and Kurt Cobain was either still alive or almost still alive. I suspect that the average art gallery in America today might not have even been around in the mid-'90s, so for a program like No Dead Artists to even make it this far is noteworthy in its own right." http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2008-09-02/art_feat.php

Lousiana Homes & Gardens, Lisa Leblanc-Berry "Ode to White Linen,"

Where Y'at, Suzanne Pfefferie "Art Night Out," Volume 10, Issue 10

"While strolling down the street, try to stop inside every air-conditioned gallery, since each spot has something unique to offer. The Jonathan Ferrara Gallery is one of them. Flaunting new works by Kathleen Ariatti Banton, Ferrara's gallery will give a splash of color to the crips, white night. Many of her abstract pieces are derived from her own life experiences and her response to them is etched into each painting. The end result is appealing and affective."

Banton's paintings often convey messages, emotion, and meaning through the startegic placement of shapes and deliberate strokes of paint. She even uses the juxapostion of lines to create the sense of a struggle and stacked images to represent the endless amount of responsibilities that we carry. Each original creation is a story caputred on canvas, and it is one that art enthusiasts will want to follow throughout Ferrara's gallery."

Links followed by date of entry:

http://hellojupiterart.com/blog/art/dan-tague-money-prints/   Date April, 7 2008

http://kiserblog.wordpress.com/ Date April, 13 2008

http://growabrain.typepad.com/growabrain/  Date April, 13 2008

http://powrightbetweentheeyes.typepad.com/pow_right_between_the_eye/ Date April, 15 2008

http://logicgui.com/  Date April, 15 2008

http://blog.groundswellcollective.com/   Date April, 17 2008

http://righthandthief.blogspot.com/search?q=dan+tague   Date April, 17 2008

http://thatveiledgazelle.blogspot.com/   Date April, 22 2008

http://www.bonvivantonline.com/    Date April, 24 2008

The Gabmit Weekly, "Adult Swim"

Eric D. Bookhardt, October 16, 2007

"The show is called The Sawdust Ring. But the biggest, if temporary, part of it was an opening night installation called Baby Pool Drive In, a kind of ad hoc deck and cabana evoked by actual baby pools and deck furniture on a patch of Astroturf on the street outside the gallery. This conveys something of Miranda Lake's flair for blurring the usual boundaries between a dream world and the real world, in this case a bit of personal history. It seems that Julia Street gallerist Jonathan Ferrara had been struck by Lake's penchant for throwing parties with movies and exotic drinks with baby pools in place of the real pool that she hopes to have some day in the future. Impressed by the compelling surrealism of the setting, he encouraged her to recreate it as installation art. That mix of dream theater and gritty, street-level reality seems to be what propels much of her work. Lake is clearly guided by dreams, but she is also influenced by the mementos, keepsakes and talismanic objects that adorn her home, some of which symbolize dreams made tangible. Vice and Squalor features one such object, an antique Underwood typewriter sprouting bullhorns. It floats over a vague topography of seashells and old, Katrina-wracked homes as pigeons descend from a sky where an oversized sun bears ledger-like inscriptions of antique handwriting. The mysteriousness of the imagery is heightened by Lake's encaustic collage medium in which photographic imagery is combined with bits of old maps, ledgers and even kimono scraps bathed in beeswax to create a floating sensibility of 'displacement and timelessness." Jena Street Social Club features cowgirl singers performing around a stage that is actually an ornate old gas heater. Surreal shifts in scale cause the heater-stage to loom large next to the pigeons and cowgirls, who all appear about the same size. It's a tactic also employed in Last Night I had the Strangest Dream, in which wild horses run through canyons amid mesas that are actually giant barnacles. Lake's images have a sweetness that underlies their surreal content, and if they sometimes seem a little repetitious this time around, her best pieces recreate the world around us as if seen anew " a hopeful omen for the future."

http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2007-10-16/art_rev.php

The Gabmit Weekly, "No Dead Artists 2007"

Eric D. Bookhardt, September 4, 2007

"Ferrara's new Julia Street gallery, has become a local institution of sorts. Beyond the seemingly obvious, yet not necessarily easy, task of providing a platform for emerging artists to gain recognition while still alive and kicking, NDA has proven itself a fairly oracular bellwether for emerging trends and blossoming careers. A quick perusal of the names of artists who have attained a degree of notoriety over the past decade reveals a number of NDA alums. But the fates governing the art world are notoriously fickle, so it's no sure thing. As Ferrara himself says, "It's always different and it's always the same," meaning that even as new trends and artists emerge, much remains unchanged."

http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2007-09-04/art_feat.php

The Gabmit Weekly, "Earthly Passions"

Eric D. Bookhardt, June 12, 2007

"It's as predictable as swallows returning to Capistrano. Whenever the exhibition space at 400A Julia Street goes empty, another gallery soon moves in and fills the void. When Sylvia Schmidt decided not to renew her gallery's lease in the weeks just after Katrina, the Jenkins Connelly Gallery, originally rooted in Baton Rouge, took over. Then when Penelope Jenkins decided to move to a building she was renovating around the corner, it wasn't long before Jonathan Ferrara Gallery -- who had relocated his gallery upstairs from his former space on Carondelet Street after the storm -- moved in. As the I-Ching so sagely puts it, "continuity in the midst of change is the secret of the universe," and indeed, the universal order is in no danger here."

http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2007-06-12/art_rev.php

The Gabmit Weekly, "Memory Laps"

Eric D. Bookhardt, January 16, 2007

"I've never actually met Matthew Cox, and perhaps it's just as well. A Texas native and occasional resident of New Orleans and Philadelphia, Cox is a painterly chameleon whose published comments to art writers have alluded to various influences ranging from the avatars of the Italian Renaissance to the quirky psychological edginess of Lucien Freud, the London master of brutally frank portraiture. And if they all reflect occasional kernels of truth, they might also add up to a smorgasbord of red herrings, because none seems to lead to any of those "Ah ha!" moments of revelation in which the direction of Cox's brush finally becomes clear. Fortunately, the art world, unlike commercial aviation, has no control tower that clears artists to take off or land."

http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2007-01-16/art_rev.php

The Gabmit Weekly, "Flights of Fancy"

Eric D. Bookhardt, December 19, 2006

"In the art world, there is a long tradition of the flaneur, the solitary observer who wanders the streets of the city, taking his inspiration where he finds it. Often it takes the form of castaway objects, debris from the trash heap or sometimes the second-hand store. Joseph Cornell, the found-object sculptor whose magical shadow boxes made for a new medium in their own right, was a world class flaneur who routinely patrolled the streets of Manhattan looking for exactly the right orphaned objects to complete some box sculpture so precisely orchestrated as to constitute a miniature cosmos in its own right."

http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2006-12-19/art_rev.php

Artists gain a measure of freedom in Cuba

By James Varney
Newhouse News Service

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/entertainment/2001861242_cubanart20.html