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Art

Canvases reflect the pain of their past

By LENNIE BENNETT
Published August 25, 2006

Girl with Birdcages and Paper Birds, Maria Emilia

Film Dissident filmmakers dare to explore Cuba's issues Fidel Castro understands the political influence of cinema, a lesson learned through the writings of his socialist role model, Vladimir Lenin. Music Dreams of becoming an architect redesigned If it weren't for Fidel Castro, Freddy Montes might be designing nightclubs instead of performing in them. Talk about your odd twists of fate. Stage Freedom of expression takes on personal meaning Cuban artists' creativity has been profoundly influenced by Fidel Castro, whether stifled in their homeland or reflective of the hardships artists in exile endured because of the revolution. Here are a few of their stories.

Demi, a Miami artist, left her real name behind when she left Cuba.

"It means half or small," she said. "In 1961 I was 7 years old when my father, a soldier, was executed by the new government and my life changed completely. I lost everything."

Her mother remained in Cuba with Demi's two older sisters but sent her to Puerto Rico to live with relatives. They were eventually reunited in the United States, but the artist said she grew up introverted and "full of hate."

"I blamed the Cuban people, not just Fidel Castro," she said. "But thanks to art, I was able to release myself from hatred."

Marriage at 28 to Arturo Rodriguez, an artist and another Cuban exile, was the catalyst, she said. She was an actor when they met, but he encouraged her to paint. Her canvases, elaborate and detailed, read like dreams of longing and love.

Her subjects are herself and Rodriguez, often surrounded by "strange children, like dolls with no hair or ears, a reflection of the hurt that will never heal."

The Kiss, shown here, has Demi's romantic lyricism tinged with melancholy and longing.

Demi mostly has found peace with her past.

"My art in certain ways is political," she said. "The past still feeds it, but now I paint from humanity. I think of all the exiled and dispossessed children."

Maria Emilia, artist and executive director of Florida Craftsmen Gallery in St. Petersburg, also left Cuba in 1961. She was 14. Unlike Demi, she was only briefly separated from her parents who joined her several months later.

Emilia, too, has experienced a shift over the years in her feelings about the Cuban diaspora and the way they translate to her art.

"For many years, my work was only about the exile experience," Emilia said, "and this effort to make sure people immediately recognized I was a Cuban artist. I did not deviate until the mid 1990s when I encountered the concept of heroism."

A project dealing with people who were killed protesting other totalitarian regimes, such as the Nazis, changed her.

"I realized I was missing the point looking from the perspective of the oppressor," Emilia said. "I shifted to the regular people, the ones who don't want to die or be martyrs but assume responsibility and rise to greatness."

But her past remains with her in many of her works. An ongoing series of elaborate drawings are self-portraits of herself as a child. A recent work, Girl with Birdcages and Paper Birds, shown here, is a photographic collage with a valentine from her late father and a photograph of herself at 6 "in one of the big skirts my mother made for me."

Lennie Bennett can be reached at 727 893-8293 or lennie@sptimes.com

[Last modified August 24, 2006, 08:32:28]