Vida, a show to dress in tradition (+photos).

Identity, remembrance of ancestors, tradition and refined beauty were combined to give birth to the show Vida, a fashion collection by Matanzas designer Juan Carlos Jiménez Huerta with the artwork of Manuel Mendive Hoyos, winner of the 2001 National Plastic Arts Award.

Identity, remembrance of ancestors, tradition and refined beauty were combined to give birth to the show Vida, a fashion collection by Matanzas designer Juan Carlos Jiménez Huerta with the artwork of Manuel Mendive Hoyos, winner of the 2001 National Plastic Arts Award.

Eighteen models elegantly showcased the beauty of the pieces distinguished by textile inking, hand woven fabrics and ceramic, woven and handmade accessories.

They were presented in a fashion show on the stage of the Sauto Theater last Saturday, accompanied by music and folkloric dances, oral narration and performance, on the occasion of Mendive’s 80th birthday, in which the participants’ clothing designs were also part of the visual discourse conceived for the occasion.

The collection, created for the most recent edition of Exhuberarte, the festival of handcrafted fashion in Cuba, invites the appreciation of a sui generis, original and original beauty, in which natural elements, Yoruba deities in perfect symbiosis with nature, are recreated.

The use of color in these dresses, sets of shirts and pants, overalls, shirts, bags and turbans is fundamental because, between whites, reds and yellows, it shows the relationship between the human and the divine, the dreamlike and the earthly, the original and modernity, also characteristic in Mendive’s work, in a sort of concordance that comes from the primordial times of man as a reminder of the transcendence of respecting and venerating tradition and identity.

With the artistic production of Alexander Rodríguez and the general direction of Master Lilian Padrón, the show Vida overcame the inclemencies of nature and modern times; the audience waited patiently for the downpour to subside and the Sauto Theater to benefit from electricity, whose lack has dented more than once valuable and quality presentations, dreamed and organized months in advance, to the detriment of the work of the organizers, the enjoyment of the audience and one of the primary functions of art and culture as a whole: the transforming character of its proposals.

The storyteller Ileana Hernández, who recreated a Pataki to Obatalá, performed on the stage of the Yumurino coliseum, given the impossibility of occupying the stalls due to constructive affectations and the pertinent studies that are being carried out there on purpose, members of the Danza Espiral dance company showed their careful performance of folkloric dances, Kilma Alfonso González, a middle level student of the Provincial School of Music and Mary Cardoso with the prayers and songs from Africa that came to Cuba with the enslaved men and women.

Life becomes a symbiosis of respect and beauty, past and present, strength and exquisiteness to define ourselves and define ourselves today as children and direct heirs of our cultural roots, with yesterday as a shield, today as a motive and tomorrow as an oath of respect and veneration towards the autochthonous and the authentic, in the midst of a context that strives to erase the exquisite cultural richness that nourishes and transcends us as a people.

Written by Jesica Mesa.