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WHERE ARE YOU FROM - final weeks
Until April 17 - plan your visit now !


Exhibition of the two-year VLIR-UOS project 'Time Labs: Cuba Photography Missions' at cc Mechelen.
Promoter: Bert Danckaert - Local promoter: Ossain Raggi
Photographers: Linet Sanchez (Cub)- Ricardo Elias (Cub)- Nelson Ramirez de Arellano (Cub) - Ossain Raggi (Cub)- Ulla Deventer (D)- Charlotte Lybeer (B)- Simon Roberts (UK)- Bert Danckaert (B)
Curator: Joachim Naudts

Where Are You From?' in HART Magazine
Marc Ruyters (auto translated)
A collaboration between ISA, Universidad de las Artes in Havana and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp.

A photography exhibition with four Cuban and four European artists is currently on display in the Cultural Centre in Mechelen under the title Where Are You From? The exhibition departs from the complex reality of Cuba, against a background of a turbulent history. Featuring photographers such as the Belgian Bert Danckaert and Charlotte Lybeer, and the Cuban Ossian Raggi González, the exhibition is the result of a collaborative project that juxtaposes the photographic interpretations of four local artists with those of four from Europe. The exhibition is curated by Joachim Naudts, currently artistic director of Kunsthal Extra City in Antwerp.

 

In 2019, Cuba celebrated the 60th anniversary of the revolution. In 1959, Fidel Castro and Ché Guevara ousted dictator Batista and the country entered a 'utopian future'. But caught between the hammer and the anvil of Soviet communism and the American embargo, Cuba was forced to survive and remained fundamentally committed to the socialist values of the revolution.

Against this background, an extensive photography project was set up with four Cuban and four European artists. Taking the current reality of the island as their starting point, they each developed a project, which together give a nuanced picture of the complexity of the country. The eight projects juxtapose the photographic interpretations of four local artists with those of four from Europe, who created their work during several intensive working trips. The project starts from 'heritage' in the broadest sense of the word and focuses on Cuba's past, present and future.

 

In the exhibition rooms of CC Mechelen, there are eight installations, one for each artist, that provide an incredibly nuanced picture of Cuba, in all its facets. After the presentation in Mechelen, the exhibition will travel on to the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana.

The largest room contains the work of Charlotte Lybeer, who made portraits of Cuban boys and girls, often wearing T-shirts - fake or otherwise - with the big brand names from all over the world. Her work underlines the fact that even in contemporary Cuba, advancing commerce cannot be avoided. The work of Liudmila & Nelson (Cuba) is intriguing: you see historical images from the city and the country, where the faces of the characters are hidden under little planes and accompanying graphics show the degree of development of the country, compared to other countries. This is about young shoe shiners versus the death rate for children, the staff of a hospital versus the health index, a car accident versus the Covid death rate. Linet Sánchez shows photos and slow videos of models of architectural constructions that evoke a strong house clos feeling. Do they hide or protect something?

 

In a smaller room, there is the all-encompassing installation by Ulla Deventer (Germany), who, with photos, film, drawings and objects, conjures up a haunting experience of women and machismo, in the context of the precarious economic situation in Cuba.

In the second large room, Bert Danckaert shows his photographic work: he is known for his photographic expeditions all over the world, in which he tautly shows spaces, streets, facades and so on without any trace of human presence. And yet man is present in his absence. In recent years, Danckaert has photographed countless images of old, dilapidated and closed cinemas in Havana, a city that once had more cinemas than Paris or New York. This time there are traces of people, as careless passers-by of so much past glory. Especially the image of cinema Karl Marx strikes one. In the same room, Ricardo G. Elias shows fairly disconcerting black-and-white images of Cuba's largest decaying industry, the cane-sugar business - decay, rust, pollution.

 

Simon Roberts (United Kingdom) shows a video on two screens, in which he shows the opposition between Fidel Castro, who advocates total atheism (we see and hear a number of inspired speeches), and the Cuban people who surrender themselves to the most obscure religious practices, ranging from infants sprinkled with chicken blood to all kinds of voodoo rituals.

In another room, Roberts also shows somptuous images of Cuba's many churches and cathedrals. In the same darkened room, Cuban night shots by Ossain Raggi González, the most 'traditional' in Where Are You From? But he does put his finger on the right spot in a conversation between himself and Bert Danckaert in the catalogue, with his vision of the photographic work of Europeans on the one hand and Cubans on the other: 'Often it has been these extreme visions that have allowed us, Cubans, the opportunity to see ourselves from the outside. To see how our lights and shadows are perceived by 'the others'.

 

So the Cubans make that light and shadow themselves, just as their entire social, political and cultural life evokes it. And that makes this strong exhibition unusually clear.
The book 'Where Are You From' was published by Stockmans Art Books.
Texts by Alison Nordström, Ossain Raggi and Bert Danckaert.
€ 39,00 order here
Cuba Photography Missions
The Institute of Doubt
Copyright © 2022 Bert Danckaert, All rights reserved.


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