Sports, the Right to Art

Yanelys Nuñez Leva

HAVANA TIMES — The gallery “Espacio Abierto” (Open Space), located in Havana’s Vedado district at the headquarters of the magazine Revolucion y Cultura, is celebrating the holding of the 2012 Olympic Games in London with the exhibit El Deporte, derecho del Arte (Sports, the Right to Art).

Paintings, objects, prints, installations, video creations, photographs and posters come together in this exhibition to reflect on human problems, cultural events occurring on the island (i.e. the baseball game played in 1989 by visual artists, which had great resonance for it rebellious nature), and also on the most immediate political and social realities of our country.

Participation in sports like chess, football, boxing, martial arts, athletics, basketball and baseball are aesthetically employed by these artists in the realization of such concerns and concepts.

The works, dating from 1989 to the present, were created by renowned Cuban artists such as Adonis Flores, Franklin Alvarez, Jose Alberto Figueroa, Sandra Ramos, Aimee Garcia, Carlos Alberto Fernandez Montes de Oca, Grupo Nudo, Pedro Vizcaino, Reynerio Tamayo, Jose Angel Toirac, Alfredo Manzo, Rocio García, Rene Peña, Lazaro Saavedra and Enrique Rottenberg.

Its curator, Israel Castellanos (who also provides the public with a piece of his own work) aims to provide irreverence, originality and a strong dose of boldness.

This exhibition will be open until November 23, 2012, demanding the rights of art in sports, thereby exploiting all the symbolic and expressive possibilities that this cultural manifestation provides.

Click on the thumbnails below to view all the photos in this gallery. On your PC or laptop, you can use the directional arrows on the keyboard to move within the gallery. On cell phones use the keys on the screen.