Transforming Violence Into Art in Cuba
¨Transforming Violence into Art.” by Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara from he series “Dead Nature..” Drawing the camera the watches me 24 hours a day.
Photos and drawings courtesy of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara as posted on his FB page. February 10, 2021.
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is a Cuban contemporary artist, human rights activist and one of most visible faces of the San Isidro Movement, comprised of dissident artists, intellectuals and activists from a wide variety of civil society groups. In the past two years, he has been arrested approximately 30 times in retaliation for leading a crusade against censorship in Cuba and for his peaceful struggle for individual liberties. In November 2020 he along with a group of artists and activists started a hunger strike calling for the release of fellow artist and human rights activist Denis Solís. The strike ended when the state security police (disguised as health care officials) broke into Luis Manuel’s house on November 26 and arrested him and all other participants. In response to this arbitrary action a group of artists and civil society groups took to the streets the following day and gathered in front of the Ministry of Culture in what has been so far the largest demonstration of protest in recent decades.
Frightened by the prospect of a new generation of young people rising up in defence of their fundamental human rights, Cuba’s Great Brother’s dictatorial regime started a crackdown on dissident artists that has resulted in systematic short term arrests, intimidation and a campaign of character assassination against Luis Manuel and leading figures in the pro democracy movement. In the case of Luis Manuel, a surveillance camera was installed in front of his home (also the headquarters of the San Isidro Movement) to track down all his moves and as well as all other artists and people visiting his house. The Cuban dictatorship considers peaceful artists and rights defenders “dangerous” individuals and “provocateurs” and through their repressive actions demonstrate what José Martí once said about dictatorships: “Only oppression fears the full exercise of freedom.”
Photos and drawings courtesy of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara as posted on his FB page. February 10, 2021.
For Luis Manuel, painting a surveillance camera is a way to speak out and denounce an intrusive and arbitrary way that a regime uses to violate people’s privacy in Cuba with total impunity. It is a way to show this is not normal despite its frequent occurrence on dissident activists. Through art, he is documenting the instruments of repression as a way to leave graphic evidence for posterity.
“This series of drawings also has to do with my intimacy and my space … How is it possible that we live in a regime in which they not only violate your intimacy but also do it with impunity …In the history of universal art, drawing is way to leave something, [a visual testimony], an image to posterity. In fact, I remember when I visited Cambodia and noticed that the only evidence left about the existence of concentration camps was through the paintings of a Cambodian artist who pained the things that happened to people there. He survived … I am spending time [on this drawing] so that I can leave [a graphic evidence of the regime’s] repression and abuses to posterity.”
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara talks with Michael Lima Cuadra of Democratic Spaces about his drawing/artwork titled “Turning Violence Into Art. February 10, 2021
Through his artistic representation, Luis Manuel also shows that “where there is power, there is resistance.” Even though Cubans are ruled by a dictatorial regime that puts individuals in a state of defencelessness, Luis Manuel’s response has been empowering. Through his artwork he shows show the human spirit is uncrushable. To the Great Brothers’ surveillance camera, an onerous icon of repression in a police state, he has responded with an artistic representation of a camera covered in white flowers. This is the way for a dissident artist and more broadly for a new generation of young people to respond to a 62 years old obsolete dictatorship with love, a little bit of laughter and craftiness. This is the ultimate demonstration of what empowerment means in the face of oppression.