Iconocracy. The Image of Power and the Power of the Image in Cuban Contemporary Photography

From June 26 to October 4, 2015, the north exhibition space at ARTIUM, Centro Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo, presents the exhibition titled "Iconocracy. The Image of Power and the Power of the Image in Cuban Contemporary Photography." Curated by Iván de la Nuez, the exhibition underscores the role played by photography in Cuba in recent decades and the manner in which this practice has been used to approach subject matter and personal stylistic and artistic pursuits. The curatorship of the exhibition is explained in the ARTIUM homepage as follows: "The Cuban Revolution was the first of its kind in the widespread use of television and, unlike other communist countries, photography and not giant statues was responsible for spreading the official iconography. This describes the origin of that which we might call 'Iconocracy,' a model of government that, among its many powers, promoted the enhancement of its imaginary through photographic images. And this explains why the Cuban art that followed was not solely forced to deal with that dominant photographic tradition, but also with its mythology as well as with the need to process and surpass both its aesthetic discourse and myths. This is precisely what the exhibition 'Iconocracy…' addresses by bringing together through photography a group of Cuban artists from several generations who, despite their biographical, aesthetic or marked political differences, agree in challenging that which has been accepted and disseminated as Cuban Photography. This is not an easy task, given that these new 'photographers'—and here the quotation marks already indicate the problematic use of the term—have been forced to deal with an iconographic tradition in which the image is constituted as reflection and document of the collective imaginary of an entire country. So, in order to become free from that tutelary image, it was essential to choose other strategies—from iconoclasm to iconophagy—in search of imaginaries that were in line with the requirements of the new times." The exhibition presents 70 works created by 30 artists, including: Juan Carlos Alom, Pedro Álvarez, Juan Pablo Ballester, Carlos R. Cárdenas, Luis Cruz-Azaceta, Arturo Cuenca, Carlos Garaicoa, Jesús Hdez-Güero, Tony Labat, Hamlet Lavastida, Reynier Leyva-Novo, Rogelio López-Marín (Gory), Los Carpinteros, María Martínez-Cañas, Ana Mendieta, Abelardo Morell, Ernesto Oroza, Geandy Pavón, René Peña, Marta María Pérez-Bravo, Manuel Piña, and José Ángel Vicench, among others.