Cuba is still the same at the end of this year, and according to Dr. House, it will continue like this, because people never change
14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, December 29, 2024 — If you are given the choice between staying at home and watching “Dr. House” – especially that episode in which Wilson asks him not to confuse medicine with metaphysics and he answers that it doesn’t matter, because the truth is the truth – or visiting a place related to Cuba, even if it is the most innocent, always choose the first. And not only because House’s philosophy is always better than nationalism and nostalgia, but because everything that has to do with that country is tired, historical or transcendental. Even more so if it is the end of the year, when every act is a summary, a compendium of what has been lived and an announcement of the future.
But it happens that one chooses both things, and with the promise of returning to television at midnight – tea or cigar in hand – he immerses himself in the cold of Salamanco, zero degrees while I write for the reader’s information, and overcomes the mileage that separates him from the Domus Artium, the monstrous enclosure that houses the collection of Cuban art by Luciano Méndez.
Méndez, an old banker born in Salamanca, is one of the quietest and most famous collectors of Cuban works. Money, more will, more contacts. Residence – I think – in Havana. More than 600 pieces preserved, judging by the explanation of the attentive receptionist of the Domus Artium, in vaults safer than Winston Churchill’s bunker. Of these, the work of several contemporary painters is on display until February. Take advantage, boy, whispers a little devil or a cemí [Taino spirit] on my shoulder.
Deliciously touristy, very warm, the guide gives her best so that the Europeans can savor the tropical flavor
Well, here I am, eight at night, about to start a tour. I am accompanied by my wife and, together but not scrambled, a tall German woman who looks like Tilda Swinton, a couple of university students – I would say they appear to be stoned if it were not a cliché – two French housewives and the guide, Cuban by the way. It promises to be an immersive experience, so I stay away from the motley group as much as possible.
Deliciously touristy, very warm – did I mention that we are now at minus one degree? – the guide gives it her best so that the Europeans can savor the tropical flavor. The excess of maritime metaphors – the exhibition is called “Log of an Unfinished Journey” – leaves Swinton and company cold, and they soon disperse and contemplate the paintings, turning their necks with the elasticity of those possessed.
So much solemnity overwhelms me, and I begin to see the exhibition from the end to the beginning. If the crossing is unfinished, if the logbook is incomplete, if the sailor has an elegant name for the raft, I will have no problems. Serious mistake. Because of my recklessness, Fabelo assaults me at the start. Fabelo is to painting what Padura is to literature. They no longer surprise us but we like to have them on hand, on the wall, in the shower or on the bookshelf, the better to insult them.
For his ornamental vocation and how good he looks on a coaster or a curtain, Fabelo is a great favorite of collectors
For his ornamental vocation and how good he looks on a coaster or a curtain, Fabelo is a great favorite of collectors. The guide explains to the survivors that the master is not only a prodigy at painting tits – we are facing a great breast observer – but also works with everyday objects of the country, and that the blackened coffee maker, that Celtic cauldron, that toothless fork truly belong to the families of that aboriginal civilization. I am amazed, because Fabelo’s junk enjoys better health than the utensils of any Cuban house.
I come across Alejandro Gómez Cangas’ megalithic lines. Lines that are scary, lines that confirm what we already knew: even after death we Cubans form a line. Faceless faces, broken flip-flops, the eternal string bags. It makes you want to ask who’s the last [in line], but we get to Sosabravo’s paintings. I am bewitched looking at the transparent indigo of “La Soprano Calva” [The Bald Soprano]- death, according to Cabrera Infante – and I pass by Sandra Ramos, Daniela Águila, the photos of Roberto Chile, that Landaluze of Castroism, and Manuel Mendive.
I have always wondered why a country that has Belkis Ayón needs Manuel Mendive and if the Devil would not allow us the metaphysical trick of exchanging him for her. In the Cuban afterlife, Belkis is the queen, and Mendive, if anything, an altar boy. But, according to taste, there are orishas and the Sikanese.
In Cuba artists have to express themselves in allegories, she says, because there may be censorship
Before Elizabeth Cerviño’s El Deshielo [The Thaw] the guide stops. Absorbed in front of the canvas, without sparing opinions, she explains the ideological caliber of the painting and its historical dimension. In Cuba, artists have to express themselves in allegories, she says, because there may be censorship. Tilda Swinton, until now half-dead, wakes up. “Das darf doch nicht wahr sein!” [That can’t be true!] she exclaims. “And critical artists, can they return to their country?” “Of course not!” answers the guide. “As long as you don’t attack the Government head-on, you can return, of course.”
Mein Gott, I think, and I vanish. Ciao, Chano, and thank you for the paintings. With citizens like that who needs counterintelligence? Dr. House says that everyone is lying and I hope he’s right. He also says that the truth is the truth, and that the idea of nation is one of the most stupid and dangerous that the human being has devised.
It’s now the end of the year and every act smells like a summary, a compendium of what has been experienced and an announcement of the future. Cuba is still the same, and according to House’s diagnosis, it will continue to be so, because people never change. Or the change is slow and sometimes life is not long enough to see it. Hope is a narcotic that my generation, unlike the previous ones, never smoked. I go back home and thaw out. My little thaw. Is there more homeland than this sofa?
Translated by Regina Anavy
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