Cuban Digital Art & Exhibitions: Hunger, Resistance, and Resilience

Yasser Castellanos is a visual and digital artist, graffiti artist and MC.  He is a writer and visual artist who was an early member of Movimiento San Isidro (MSI). An opposition figure, he was associated with the group OMNI Zona Franca. Along with other members of MSI, he has participated in hunger strikes and has been detained by the Cuban government multiple times for his activism.  Works within the series 'Thinking about Cuba' by the independent artist Yasser Castellanos have been described by follow member of the San Isidro Movement, Otero Alcántara, as significant, and the “ online space as a territory to expand creativity and break away from the usual fixities, especially in a context like Cuba's, where in times of pandemic, due to citizen control and confinement, censorship on freedom of expression can be exercised with greater force."

From the CADEL exhibition.

“S/T” (2021) from the series “Pensando en Cuba:"

This piece portrays a battle between two figures—hunger and the Covid virus.  The captions read “between the risk of contagion and an empty food plate, which of the two fears will result to be the most dangerously fierce.”  The use of and reference to the Cuban flag within this series is a violation of Cuban law on the uses of the flag. The artist has stated, in reference to pieces in this series, and works that incorporate references to the Cuban flag: [statement to be translated} Desde el 2009 estaba pensando en la bandera como un símbolo que hiciera que todos los cubanos se sintieran incluidos y de ser posible, comprometidos, como un intento de contrarrestar el grado de fragmentación al que habíamos llegado en la lucha por la sobrevivencia. Fue una manera de decir que habían realidades diferentes al discurso oficial que también eran parte de Cuba, de mostrar verdades necesarias para tomar conciencia de nuestra condición como individuos, sociedad o nación.

Untitled, from the “Pensando en Cuba” series:

The piece represents a nest filled with hungry baby birds.  The Cuban flag serves as the nest and the birds are the color of the stripes within the national flag.  Cuban law prohibits the use of the Cuban flag in art such as that produced by Yasser, or any cultural representations not sanctioned by the government.  The piece was created in defiance of the law. The image can be understood to be a critique of hunger endured by an abandoned population. The parent bird is absent, the birds are famished, and some are helplessly waiting.  Still developmentally unable to leave the nest or feed themselves, one lone baby bird, representative of those that risk it all regardless of resources, flies out of the nest.  The viewer is left to answer whether the lone brave bird risking death survives. The birds, stand in for the Cuban population, dependent and vulnerable on the state, lacking in the ability to self-sustain.  Yet, among such a vulnerable population one dares to fly reluctant to simply wait for starvation to set in.

Commentary by K. L. Cespedes

For more information about this work, see the following article: