Cuban Bricolage: The Artists Books of Ediciones Vigia

 

Cuban Bricolage takes place within an exceptional context. Since December 2014 –when U.S. and Cuban Presidents, Barack Obama and Raúl Castro, announced their mutual intentions of reactivating the relationship between the two nations—the general interest in Cuba has unexpectedly increased.  This exhibition, about one of Cuba’s most innovative fine art publishing houses, sheds light on this often misunderstood country.  While showcasing pieces of remarkable aesthetic value, the exhibition also exposes the entire UConn community to a little known aspect of Cuba’s cultural production. –Marisol Ramos

borges72dpi1234_00321-1024x497An exhibition of handcrafted books by members of the world-renowned Ediciones Vigía, an artist collective and publishing house in Cuba, is on display in UConn’s Homer Babbidge Library through May 2, 2016.

Since its creation in 1985 in the city of Matanzas, Ediciones Vigía has been internationally recognized as a unique artist’s collaborative, whose work is produced in limited editions and housed in private and public libraries, such as the British National Library, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), the Library of Congress, and universities throughout the world. Ediciones Vigía’s catalog encompasses works by authors such as Baudelaire, Emily Dickinson, Pasternak, Tolstoy, Tagore, and Verlaine, Spanish-language authors such as Borges, Federico García Lorca, and Gabriela Mistral, and renowned Cuban writers such as José Martí, Lezama Lima, and Nancy Morejón.

According to the exhibition co-curator Marisol Ramos, Latin American & Caribbean Studies, Latino Studies, Spanish & Anthropology Librarian at the University, “each entirely handmade volume is a genuine piece of art, as well as a powerful testimony of struggle and artistic survival and sustainability, showing its creators’ ‘advocacy of the aesthetics of the poor, of what’s ugly, and inexpensive’, as Ediciones Vigía’s co-founder and chief designer, Rolando Estévez said in a recent online interview.”

Read more…

 

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.