Interview with Jesús Hdez-Güero
Jesús Hdez-Guero, born in Havana in 1983, studied visual arts in the San Alejandro Academy (1999-2003) and in the Higher School of Art (ISA, 2004-2009). Since then, his creative interests are not limited to a specific medium, but to the implementation of combined solutions where he makes use of elements of drawing, graph, photography, video, installation and performance. From his viewpoint, what is important is that the use of each procedure or language points to a critical rereading of the link between the artistic experience and the social apparatus.
Since 2011, he lives and works between Havana and Maracay (Venezuela), discerning the symmetries and divergences between both realities.
(…) What is your present perception of visual arts in Cuba? Can you offer a comment on the artistic topics or problems you consider more relevant?
Visual arts in Cuba are suffering, or I would better say enjoying, because it is not a state of ailment, but rather of gratification, of some opening on travelling and the chance of being abroad. The opportunity of being inside and outside, without losing any rights, is something very important favoring the field of action and experimentation of artists in other contexts and with other persons.
Contact and connection with international events and creative agencies not only provide energy to Cuban contemporary art, but allow drawing international attention on it.
That is, it becomes a boomerang effect where artists may create their own discourses in global scenes and make the large international art focuses see a still fertile and dynamic field in Cuba. Another important thing is the opening of the possibility for Cuban artists who were abroad to enter the country. They were very active and were not assimilated into the artistic context of the Island. This retaken interconnection broadens the edges and the dialogue of visual arts in Cuba with a recent past, with the generation of the eighties, for example, that had almost become “mythological history.” (…)
