Factoría Habana is the new space for contemporary artistic production dedicated to experimentation, promotion and reflection. Located in Havana's Historic Center, the 3-story building will offer artists, students, curators, critics, collectors and the general public a cultural center where art will be created in a fitting environment that incorporates the interactive resources required for contemporary creation. With Concha Fontenla as its director, the institution ¿has been conceived to underscore a factory-like quality.¿ Headed by architect Abiel San Miguel ¿ from the Office of the City ¿ the restoration, according to the expert Onedys Calvo, incorporates this ¿factory¿ concept by respecting the building¿s original warehouse structure and by exploiting its open and mobile characteristics in order to guarantee its flexible functionality. Some of the recurrent themes of the center will include the prominent use of innovative media toward creations that will, for the most part, rely on sound and sensorial experimentation, design, performance, action art, as well as the presence and incidence of urban environments in the artistic practice. The center has been erected amid a cultural ¿oasis¿ in view of the need of Cuban artists and the Cuban public for a multifunctional space that meets their expectations. The first exhibition inaugurated at the venue on December 18 was entitled Antecomienzo (Before the Beginning). Like the poem by José Ángel Valente, it brought together a group of artists that represent the art produced in Cuba during the 1990s: Lázaro Saavedra; Abel Barroso; Aimeé García; Carlos Montes de Oca; Fernando Rodríguez; Ibrahim Miranda; Luis Gómez; Sandra Ramos; René Francisco Rodríguez, and Osvaldo Yero. The curatorial proposal put forth by Concha Fontenla, is associated with the philosophy found in the Spanish poet¿s verses that refer to the will to recommence as a driving force for human beings. The exhibition revealed a generational focus, as it includes the participation of artists who, for one reason or another, remain in Cuba and have had to address difficult socio-cultural circumstances, reformulate their discourses, and deal with the market, although they shared the same determination of never renouncing to the renovating nature of the most authentic art. Antecomienzo was characterized by a diversity of themes and formats: installation; video; painting; objects, and photography because it approached subjects such as censorship, social and economic inequality, the ethical unconditionality of the artist, and the perpetual nature of creation, among others. The ironic record in the proposals ¿ commonly present in Cuban art ¿ remind us that these artists belong to a tradition of criticism. O'Reilly 308 e/ Habana y Aguiar, La Habana Vieja Phone: 0537 8649518; E-mail: onedys00@yahoo.es