Biennial of love, that of Matanzas.
Tamara Caridad Mesa González 16 mayo, 2019
The Biennial in Matanzas created very serious and beautiful bridges between artists from more than a dozen countries, not many friends call it the biennial of love, said María Magdalena Campos-Pons, director of the Intermittent Rivers project that turned the first city modern of Cuba in subsede of the greatest event of the visual arts in the Island.
The Plaza de la Vigía, the Narváez promenade, the neighborhood of La Marina, the Palmar de Junco Stadium, the Camilo Cienfuegos campus, the Calle del Medio, the artisans’ home, and even the waters of the San Juan, welcomed initiatives of the event that ran from mid-April to May 12.
That the Matanzas feel more proud of theirs, of their museums, collections, patrimonial values, is also the positive balance left by the Biennial, the fraternization between local artists has created an atmosphere of exchange, respect and admiration that encourages, commented Luis Octavio Hernández, coordinator of the program that concluded on Sunday.
Yunior Gutiérrez Salomón said that a few months ago he was just a painter and motivated by the Biennial, he changed conventional media for visuality.
The experience must be repeated – Salomón declared -, each one of us came out with new projects, it is an opening, and the world at this moment has a clear vision of the art that arises in Matanzas.
What we did was also a way to support the historic opening of the Havana Biennial, which is about solidarity, which opened doors in contemporary discourse to voices and places not considered before, Campos-Pons added.
We work with respect to the word of the creators, from this Biennial came the idea of founding a sculptural corridor that enriches the initiative of Osmany Betancourt (Lolo) in the street of Narváez, once abandoned area that is today one of the most desired for the recreation, added the Cuban-American professor of the American University of Vanderbilt.
In Matanzas we experimented with ideas, processes, we demonstrated that it was possible and for me – affirmed María Magdalena-, the candid dialogue from heart to heart, from town to town, in this city was realized with a dimension that I never experienced before in another biennial, and I have participated in many.
