Yanelys Nuñez’s Diary

We don’t know if they welcomed him at the airport with the traditional Guantanamera, if a Ministry of Culture official escorted him to his hotel…we don’t know anything. All we know for sure is that renowned artist Matthew Barney was – or is – in Cuba.

The stage is covered entirely with a white fabric. A naked woman is stretched out across it, posing like the Venus with the Mirror. Several objects – a stills camera, dresses, chairs, rain coats, instruction manuals and others – lie scattered on the floor about her.

I don’t know who put my name on a list to receive event notifications via cell phone, but for a while now I’ve been receiving news this way of different events being held in the city. I had received at least three messages about a Conga line to be held on Saturday, May 9th.

Cuban history is plagued with notable mysteries. What we are fed at school is a superficial and triumphalist narrative full of exaggerated ambivalence, where heroes are exceedingly good and evil men the worst you could imagine.

Enlivened with the songs of Silvio Rodríguez, the Moncada band and other musicians, now typical at this type of event, the tribute brought together a large crowd of curious spectators, underground veterans from the ‘50s, student leaders, local neighbors etc.

During a hearty, after-meal chat around a table laden with the remains of foul-smelling pizzas and enlivened by boisterous laughter, a friend of ours jokingly “lamented” the little attention and affection shown him by Cuba’s DTI (intelligence department).

A whole caravan of bicycle taxis was advancing down San Agustin, Havana’s 250th Street and a few others, carrying costumed and made-up people who threw grains of rice at passersby. No one knew the reason behind this performance…

At the beginning of the year, while studying the work of Cuban artist Antonio Nuñez (1971), I came across a series produced in 2009, in which different scenes from films by Buñuel, Godard, Truffaut and others are rendered on canvas.

I went to see Marylin Solaya’s Vestido de Novia (“Wedding Dress”) with high expectations, after hearing much praise for the film during its screening at the Havana Film Festival last December.

On January 28, we took down the pieces of one of the best exhibitions organized at our gallery in 2014. Antonio Nuñez Hernandez is a Cuban artist born in Camaguey who has been living in Germany for more than 10 years. (8 photos)