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Performing Revolution 133
the museum shedding an “indiscreet light on the links that most tautly connect
art and politics . . . in Cuba.” 103 In each case the act of repeating not
only exposed the various mythologies surrounding the original (e.g., the unrepeatability
of abstraction and the objective scholarship of the retrospective)
but also elaborated various kinds of camouXage that allowed the group to
comment on taboo subjects (the ideological unacceptability of abstraction
under dogmatic socialism, the fact that Martínez—by then practically canonized
as exemplary revolutionary artist—in fact held many opinions in
common with the younger, contestatory artists). The Martínez project, which
the group did during their third year of study at ISA, also had a more consciously
strategic vein. Satisfying the curricular requirement that they complete
a work of “social realization,” the artists decided to do something that
would make a place for themselves in the Institution, by working as curators:
their collective identity opened the door for them into the premier art
institution of the country that, as mere students, would have been closed to
them otherwise. A few months later they again exploited the special prerogative
of the curator in a “para-institutional” project that consisted of
handing over their exhibition slot at the Centro Provincial de Artes Plásticas
to Pedro Vizcaíno, a very young artist who otherwise would never have
been granted space in that prestigious institution.
Probably ABTV’s most important project was Homage to Hans
Haacke, which they organized as part of the cycle of exhibitions at the
Castillo de la Fuerza in March–October 1989. This cycle of shows, organized
by Alejandro Aguilera, Alexis Somoza, and Félix Suazo, although initially
proposed as a series focusing on sculpture, became an effort directed
at the mounting crisis between the young artists and the Cuban state, by
presenting the controversial art and artists in a setting intended for debate.
(At one point, twelve exhibitions were planned: of those, six were prepared
and only Wve actually opened. Of those Wve only four remained open for the
duration of their scheduled run.) ABTV’s contribution, again deploying
methods of institutional critique adapted from Group Material and from
Haacke himself, managed a stinging analysis not only of the cultural politics
in Cuba but also of those in Miami. The invisible line of the permissible
had been migrating with the increasingly tense situation around the young
artists, and with this project it was again crossed: after extensive “conversation”
between the artists and the vice minister of culture 104 the show was not
allowed to open because the artists Wnally refused to make the “changes”
demanded of them. The protracted negotiations had left the group depleted
and riven, unable and unwilling to pursue the “pact with power.” 105 The
dynamic among the artists became even worse when they could not agree
on whether or how to respond to the censure: Wnally, two group members