Web site:
www.alexisesquivel.com

Exposicion 'El Fin de la Historia', Salamanca, España, 30/6/11

Boletín de Cultura Afrohispana N^o 12 de 2009 (PDF, 430kb) Alexis Esquivel, la Habana: "Con la pupila abierta"

Criollo Remix Exhibit, 9/21/06 - 10/28/06, Museo del Ron, Havana Vieja

Esquivel visits US, 2/03-4/03

Gallery at Harvard University

Interview in Washington Post, 11/12/00

La Soga: the color line

On the Way Out: proposed 5 artist show on themes of racial identity, 5/00

The Threshold: proposed one person show, 5/00

Alexis Esquivel

Alexis Esquivel is a prominent Havana based painter and performance artist who has curated several exhibits on themes of racial identity.

Among these were Queloides I and Queloides II, the latter presented at Havana's Centro de Desarollo de Artes Visuales in the fall of '99.

Alexis has had an interesting experience convincing Cubans of the validity of discussing issues of race and identity. He said that one of the best means of breaking down resistance on the part of lighter skin Cubans was to begin discussing the confusion that exists on the side of black Cubans. Once people see that is it a universal problem, they are more willing to discuss it.

Alexis is proposing to bring two shows to the US: one a 5 person show, "On the Way Out," and another a personal show, "The Threshold." "On the Way Out" continues the themes of racial identity begun in the Queloides expositions.

Member of la Unión Nacional de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (UNEAC).
Member of la Asociación Nacional de Jóvenes Artistas Hermanos Saíz.
Independent Artist at the Fondo Cubano de Bienes Culturales since1994.
Visiting Fellow, Tuft University, Medford, Massachusetts, USA 2000

Alexis Esquivel in Boston for Spring 01: talk on 2/26, performance on 2/27, more

Exposicion 'El Fin de la Historia', Salamanca, España, 30/6/11

El próximo 30 de Junio, 2011, a las 20.00 horas tendrá lugar la inauguración de la exposición colectiva EL FIN DE LA HISTORIA...y el retorno de la pintura de historia. Veinte artistas reflexionan, en formato pictórico, sobre algunos de los últimos acontecimientos históricos sucedidos en el seno de nuestra sociedad. ¡¡¡Os esperamos a todos !!!

Domus Artium 2002
Avenida de la Aldehuela s/n
37003 Salamanca
923184916
www.ciudaddecultura.org/da2

Esquivel visits US, 2/03-6/03

Alexis Esquivel will be in residence at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia from mid January until the end of March. He is available for presentations, seminars, exhibits until June 15 after that.

At the University of Georgia, Alexis is developing a number of artistic projects. During his stay he will be collaborating on a book project with musicologist Susan Thomas. The project looks at the role of artists and musicians in the last decade and examines how their artistic products and personal and professional experiences have participated in the processes of internationalization and have helped to shape ideas about Cuban identity

If interested, contact him at aesquivel_AT_cubarte.cult.cu [replace _AT_ with @]

Alexis in Boston, 2/01 - 4/15

Cuban musician Jose Luis Estrada is contributing to this performance. Jose Luis Estrada is an important musician of his generation, in Cuba he played with the duo Los Cachibachi and Alcohol de 90. On March second he will be playing with his band "90 Proof" at Club Europa 98-104 Meserole Ave (Manhattan Ave) in Manhattan, NY (The Nassau stop on the G train) for more information, www.hotelamazon.com.

Alexis will have another exibit at Dudley House, Harvard University (right by Harvard Square) in March and April. The opening is March 16 at 7 PM and it extends to April 8th. The exhibit is entitled "La Luna Me esta mirando," meaning "the Moon is watching me," of which we have here a sample (click on it to enlarge):

The 22nd of February 2001 at 6PM, Tufts University Gallery, situated in the Aidekman Arts Center, Medford, MA, an exhibit opened entitled Tufts University Collections Selections in which Alexis Esquivel has "La Soga Maravillosa" ("The Marvelous Soga," an installation from 1999) which now forms a permanent part of Tufts' collection.

Interview in Washington Post, 11/12

Carving Cultural Space
[extracted from Eugene Robinson's article Cuba Begins to Answer Its Race Question, 11/12]

"The first thing you're accused of when you do work like this," said artist Alexis Esquivel, fingering his long dreadlocks, "is that you're doing something to damage the image of Cuba."

"Work like this" means the exhibitions that Esquivel, 31, and a group of Cuban artists, black and white, organized on the theme of race in Cuba. The first was called "Keloids," a reference to the raised scars that form when African skin is wounded.

One artist, Manuel Arenas, showed two paintings that dealt with black Cubans' experience in the streets--one titled "Look Out, There's a Black Man," and the other titled "ID Card" and showing a black man, set against the national emblem, opening his identity card as if to show it to a policeman. Another artist, Rene Pena, played against the stereotype of the Cuban black man as sexually voracious with a photograph of a black man's nude torso in which the penis is replaced by a knife blade.

Esquivel's work in this show, mounted at the Center for Development of the Visual Arts, centered on the soga--a rope that was used long ago at dances and other functions to separate blacks from whites. The soga is a theme he returns to again and again, sometimes installing a rope high in a gallery so that only the observant notice it, sometimes using the rope as a barrier, sometimes tying rope tightly around his face like a horse's bridle--or an instrument of bondage.

To Esquivel's surprise, the exhibition was reviewed in the official Communist Party newspaper Granma. The review was generally positive, if somewhat cool, but the significant thing was that the show was acknowledged at all. Esquivel went on to help mount a second "Keloids" exhibition.

Esquivel's own history is instructive. A mulatto by Cuban standards, he grew up in a small town in the interior. His artistic talent was recognized and he was sent to another province, Pinar del Rio, to attend a special school. Almost all of his classmates were white, and to hear him talk of the experience is like listening to a young black man talk about how he felt going to St. Albans or Sidwell Friends.

"I had to suppress my musical tastes," he said. "I liked traditional music, music you could dance to, but my friends were all into rock. I was conflicted."

"People would say something like, 'Those blacks, they're horrible.' Then they'd turn to me and say, 'Oh no, Alexis, we're not talking about you, you're fine.' Imagine what that does to a person."

He recalls the moment of his radicalization: For an assignment in school, he read "The Autobiography of Malcolm X." From that point, he identified himself as black.

"I remember going home on a visit," he said, "and telling my mother not to use hair straightener anymore."

Esquivel's partner in putting on the exhibitions was a Cuban art historian, Ariel Ribeaux, who wrote the manifesto for this gathering movement of black-themed art. Ribeaux's award-winning essay was entitled "Neither Musicians Nor Athletes."

Alexis Esquivel

Exposicion 'El Fin de la Historia', Salamanca, España, 30/6/11

Esquivel visits US, 2/03-6/03

Alexis in Boston, 2/01 - 4/15

Interview in Washington Post, 11/12

Contacting Alexis Esquivel

Contacting AfroCubaWeb

Copyright © 1997 CompanyLongName
Last modified: June 25, 2011

	AfroCubaWeb

Alexis Esquivel

Exposicion 'El Fin de la Historia', Salamanca, España, 30/6/11

Esquivel visits US, 2/03-6/03

Alexis in Boston, 2/01 - 4/15

Interview in Washington Post, 11/12

Contacting Alexis Esquivel

Contacting AfroCubaWeb

Copyright © 1997 CompanyLongName Last modified: June 25, 2011

Copyright © 1997 CompanyLongName
Last modified: June 25, 2011