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Seminar to focus on Cuban-American artists and writers
By JESSICA KELTZ
Reporter Contributor
For a long time, Jorge J.E. Gracia has been interested in the diverse social and cultural identities held by Latinos in the United States, both among and within different nationalities.
Maria Brito, self-portrait as a swan
(2001).
COURTESY OF JORGE GRACIA
"Each of these groups faces challenges that differ, depending on how they arrived in the U.S., why they came and the different generations," says Gracia, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel P. Capen Chair in the Department of Philosophy, College of Arts and Sciences.
To explore these identities, Gracia decided to examine the art, music and writing created by an ethnic group to get a sense of how immigration and displacement reveal themselves in those works and what that says about the artists and the culture.
A Cuban-American himself, Gracia serves as director of a three-week National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers that he organized around this topic, focusing specifically on Cuban-American artists and writers. The seminar, "Negotiating Identities in Art, Literature and Philosophy: Cuban Americans and American Culture," will bring 15 academics to UB June 11-30 for study, presentations and discussion.
UB sponsors are the Department of Philosophy, UB Art Galleries and UB Humanities Institute.
"Everyone knows about Cuban music, but Cubans have also been active in literature and art, and there is a small group of Cuban philosophers as well," Gracia says. He explains that this ethnic group makes for a particularly diverse study because identities within it include black, Jewish and Chinese; natives, immigrants and exiles.
Gracia organized the NEH seminar with co-directors Lynette Bosch, professor of art history at Geneseo State College, and Isabel Alvarez-Borland, professor of Spanish at Holy Cross College. Each week will be devoted to a different theme: Week one will concentrate on the discussion of philosophical texts; week two will focus on art, particularly painting and photography-based art; and week three will examine literary works of fiction and poetry.
In conjunction with the seminar, the UB Art Gallery in the Center for the Arts will host an exhibit, "Layers: Collecting Cuban American Art," that explores the impulses that inspire art collecting.
The exhibit will open with a public reception from 4-7 p.m. June 11. Cuban jazz pianist and 2005 JUNO Award Winner Hilario Durán, a native of Havana who now lives in Toronto, will perform from 5-6 p.m.
Gracia, whose private collection is featured in the exhibit, explains that the exhibit explores Cuban-American collectors who have compiled works by Cuban-American artists, and what that says about their understanding of their culture and identity. The exhibition also includes Bosch's private collection, as well as one from the Lehigh University Art Galleries.
Gracia's collection emphasizes painting and relates to his philosophical work on social group identity and personal interests. Bosch's collection includes works in diverse media, but reflects her interests as art historian on the influence of the baroque on Cuban-American art. The collection of photography-based art from Lehigh University, compiled by Ricardo Viera, reveals Viera's interests as an artist, art historian and curator.
Gracia describes a few of his favorite artists in the exhibit.
Baruj Salinas, now 70 years old, was a well-known artist in Cuba when he left the country. A Sephardic Jew, his family left Spain in the 16th century and went first to Turkey, then to Cuba, then to the United States.
"You're dealing with a history of displacement, immigration, dislocation and exile," Gracia says of Salinas' life, noting that this history is reflected in one painting that shows a branch of a palm tree and a Haitian symbol for wholeness, the mandala, that is left incomplete or broken.
"In many ways, the painting is a reflection on his history, on his life," Gracia says. "He's here in kind of a broken state."
Another of the featured artists, Alberto Rey, grew up in Western New York, having moved to the United States at age 3. He now teaches at Fredonia State College.
"He was an abstract artist, but then he took a trip to Cuba. This changed his art," Gracia says, explaining that Rey began to paint images of rafts, like the one on which his grandmother died trying to get to the United States, and of mementos that people brought with them to the United States when they left Cuba.
Gracia also highlights the work of Maria Brito, who also came to the U.S. from Cuba as a young person.
"She's had a somewhat difficult life," he says, in describing her work "Self Portrait As a Swan." In that work—part painting, part sculpture—Brito depicts a hand holding a swan that is trying to escape. "She's giving us a sense of her desire for freedom, and how forces, such as family, culture and friends, work to keep her tied up," he says.
In all, Gracia says, the show will feature more than 75 works from 35 artists.
For more information on the exhibit or to learn more about the NEH conference, visit http://www.philosophy.buffalo.edu/NEHo6/description.html.