Havana Biennial / Is Cuba the next China?

The New York Time posted an article on today's first page of The Arts section titled as Havana Biennial, in Which Chelsea Takes a Field Trip to Cuba. I read the article on the subway at 9am, and was totally shocked by it. It is horrible! And the current circumstance shows it is quite possible that Cucan will become the next undernourished global art market as it was happened in China. More dangerously, Cuba is closer to the "global art center", which facilitates the capital and political operation turn the area into another Amercian back yard.

Here's some quotes followed with my personal perspective:

The “Chelsea Visits Havana” show, which opened on Saturday as part of the 10th Havana Biennial and gives the Cuban art world a look at the New York art scene. Is this mean New York art is the canonical standard for the judgement of any other regional art? Why should Cuban art mimic the New York art scene, it is ridicules. Yeah, the author seems admit it is ironic, but the general point of view in the whole article obviously shows a indeliberate pride of American’s position in the global contemporary art world, which, goes with a presupposition that US attitude is an ultimate criterion. He legitimate this commanding attitude without any examination, or, at lest a second of doubt. I still believe that the only possible way of making a regional art biennial meaningful is the ability to address real problems and tensions in the geographical region, and to reexaming both the tradition and the modernity's influence in the daily life of the specific contemporary society. Sure one must with a global perspective, but it doesn't mean a global selling of one nation's value.

A dozen other American artists and scores of critics and buyers flocked to the island to enjoy themselves, show their wares and, perhaps, offer solidarity to Cuban artists, many of whom were denied travel visas to the United States to sell their work during the eight years of the Bush administration.

Globalization has a special relevance for the island’s artists. Before the Bush administration stopped giving visas, many of Cuba’s top artists spent months at a time in the United States or Europe. They stayed linked to the island partly because collectors are typically more interested in works produced by Cuban-based — not immigrant — artists. What does it mean by saying “American artists critics and buyers flocked to the island to enjoy themselves, show their wares and, perhaps, offer solidarity to Cuban artists”? Is it really for the sake of art communication or celebration? I don’t believe in it. It seems to me is just another filthy colonization in the form of capital game. We can see from this report how Cuba is covered in the Western media as a virgin land not only for Western investors in the art market but the whole entertainment industry and tourism as well. Obviously, there doesn’t exist an equal conversation or equal trading, for the simple fact that it is far more difficult for Cuban to go across the boundary than American. And the article described in a way as if American is the only almsgiver for Cuban artists, so that even transnational Cuban artists have to always go back to their country “because collectors are typically more interested in works produced by Cuban-based — not immigrant — artists”. If digging further into the way American media interprets the Havana Biennale, one might discover that art in this context is turned into an excuse, or, we could say that art establishes the stage, but what actually take into play are politics, economic interests, and a selling (more propriety imposing) of American value and ideology. In Cuba’s case, it is definitely too early for the biennial say “Farewell to Postcolonialism” (2008 Guangzhou Triennial’s theme), the Western power is still operating and casting a shadow on the geopolitical space.

“The hope is that this will be a first step toward normalizing U.S.-Cuban relations,” said the show’s organizer Alberto Magnan. Well, the diplomatic manoeuvres appear. Other strategies in the news are keeping delivering a sense that Havana is all about revolution, resistance, and rebel, all of which, are orthodoxy and immediate images of Third World communist countries. It somehow fulfills the Western audience’s expectation for the exotic “other” culture. But if these images have anything to do with the reality of daily life in Havana's contemporary society, they don't care.