CAMAGÜEY.- The Cartón Creativo project opens an attractive channel for the visual arts in Camagüey, with promotional management and the contemporary art market from private spaces. It is a gradual practice in Cuba, thriving in Havana. Therefore, attempting it in a territory without the opportunities or privileges of the capital is irreverent against the myths of geographical fatality.
An undertaking outside the official gallery circuit does not occur here for the first time, but on this occasion the desire to establish networks with the institutional system, the academy and any social actor in the artistic field that favors its purposes is captivating. It was established in May 2023 and has set its headquarters at the studio-workshop at 57 Lope Recio Street. Since then, each step is equivalent to the diligent outline of articulation.
Cartón Creativo was born mature. Part of the teaching of two artists, professors at the Vicentina de la Torre academy. Nelson Miranda Varona and José Antonio Hechavarría Rivas fail to separate what they learn from what they teach. They don’t want to walk alone. They prefer to walk with the company of students. It is curious that desire for transparency, the intention to be an open book and the audacity to be exposed without fear of imprecision during the searches themselves. In this sense, they propose a didactic method for the collective construction of knowledge and know-how.
Founders: Nelson, Liz Marian and José Antonio aspire to connect with the public beyond the common spaces for the plastic arts; also to consolidate the creation workshops and to create all possible exhibitions.
When talking with Nelson, who has been focused on art pedagogy for about 25 years, we understand the long journey of his foundation by something greater called the Educational Art Movement or MEDEA Project. The acronym matches the name of the woman in Greek mythology who used her children as a symbol of power. Although it does not have a location, it has not stopped.
With the sale of works they will test the ability to generate expectations based on collecting.
How MEDEA influenced other collective projects. Let ‘s remember 8+1 with Leonardo Pablo Rodríguez and Chatarra viva. Now it promotes Cartón Creativo to insist on the potential of recycling for artists in a country with shortages. His first time teaching with this main material was in Venezuela for two years. He started from the planimetric, the relief, the painting on cardboard and took it to the album for family photos. He was well received by the artists of Portuguesa and Caracas.
Nor does the sense of what lasts contradict. The reuse of resources has characterized the work of the founding artist duo. The two-person exhibition *Anacología de la forma*, open to the public from September to December at Lope Recio 57, is an interesting test. There Nelson and José Antonio exhibited pieces made of cardboard, some 30 years old, all with the probability of a long life. Nelson himself investigates and tests conservation techniques, since he has read that with treatment, due to its fibers, cardboard can last longer than a canvas.
Furthermore, they value this work taken out of the field of craftsmanship and placed at the level of contemporary art, although the category is debatable in the eyes of current critics towards new media. Since everything has a price, José Antonio insists, they do not lose sight of the emerging economic actors by identifying them as ideals to encourage internal collecting of the visual arts.
Another key person has been the young Liz Marian Río Olazábal, sociocultural manager and no less protagonist of Cartón Creativo.
Analogy of the form became the forging of it, marked the time of attuning natural talent with the tools of the career. Her way of expanding their project serves as an example to others, even if those others are of opportunity, because to change the reality of the promotion of the visual arts in Camagüey, she urges research underlying.
Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez