NEW YORK, NY.- A naked woman covered in white make-up crouches on the floor after having hacked off her own head with a samurai sword. This powerful image by Cuban painter Rocío García, whose two-part interview for the Cuban Art Space Interview Series is a tour de force of philosophy, existentialism, and nihilism that would delight Nietzsche and Freud.

"From our attitudes about sexuality spring forth many of our social, economic, even political problems," she explains in the interview.

“All of our human relationships are bound by love and violence,” she states later on.

As a viewer, I interpret the auto-decapitation painting from her Geisha series as her way of illustrating how individuals many societies may resort to self-inflicted violence and sexual self-repression in order to conform to the status quo.

Ms. García's Geisha series specifically addresses the oppression of women in society. She explains that the white make-up she uses to cover her female Geishas is a kind of mask behind which women hide their desires, conflicts, and opinions.

I would argue that there is yet another layer of significance here to peel away. Is a blank canvas covered in paint not as much a kind of mask as a painted body/face?

Interpreted in this way, we can say that Ms. García's paintings are like little mini-Revolutions that are intended to give the viewer the opportunity to liberate him or herself from self-repression.

Cuba, with its lofty Utopian aspirations, has provided unique challenges for the reconciliation of individual desires and sexual attitudes with the utilitarian goals of the state.

Not unlike other modern societies the Cuban Revolutionary government had a difficult time dealing with and assimilating gay culture into the social model. Cuba characteristically has been an open society about sex, but very closed when confronted with same sex relationships. 



I was first introduced to the subject of sexual politics in Cuba when my college Spanish course included the 1979 film Fresa y Chocolate. The film story concerns two young men, one who is a gay artist and the other, a spy assigned to befriend the artist and report alleged anti-Revolutionary activities. The film portrays the psychological toll of Cuba's absolutist revolutionary creed on a gay artist who doesn't fit the masculine, heroic revolutionary stereotype as exemplified by Castro.

"Within the Revolution: Everything. Outside of it: Nothing," Castro once declared on June 30th, 1961, just two years after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.

This philosophy may work very well when it comes to government hierarchies and economic supply chains, but not when it comes to complex human relationships and desires. 

Castro wanted a new "revolutionary consciousness" to penetrate every aspect of society, without exceptions. To him, the Revolution was not a pair of camouflage pants that was put on for battle, and taken off at home. Skin itself must be stained camouflage and everywhere was regarded as a battlefield.

Such absolutism obliterates the distinction between the personal and the political. Obviously, these are untenable expectations. 

An example of unrealistic expectations is presented by the police officer avatar who appears in several of García's paintings.

In the interview she explains that although the police officer represents order and authority, he remains, essentially, a human being. He or she feels the frustrations, anxieties, desires, and contradictory impulses common to all humans. Even though the officer is equipped with a gun and handcuffs, the figure is helpless when it comes controlling personal characteristics and desires.

The interview with Rocío García about her visual record of suppressions and injustices, including those revealed in Fresa y Chocolate, underscores that change has occurred. The Cuban government's attitude toward gays has improved since the days of Fresa y Chocolate. Today, the Cuban government is more tolerant of gay lifestyles and those who celebrate them. The visual commentary by Rocío García can be regarded as contributing to those changes.

Castro himself apologized for the Cuban government’s treatment of gays during the early days of the Revolution. “If someone is responsible, it is I,” he said, according to the BBC. Castro added that he was too occupied with the attacks against him and his government to confront homophobic attitudes within his regime during the early years of the Cuban Revolution. Today, Fidel's niece, Mariela Castro, is Cuba's leading supporter of LGBT rights and world-renowned for her work in Cuba for AIDS treatment and prevention.

That García’s meteoric rise to international stardom is fully supported by the Cuban government serves as a further illustration of the government’s move away from absolutism toward inclusiveness.
Currently, García is a Professor of Art at the San Alejandro School of Art in Havana. She received a scholarship from the Cuban government to study seven years in Leningrad, where she received a Master of Fine Arts in 1983 at the Repin School of Art and in 2005 she was awarded the Distinction for National Culture accorded by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Cuba.

Her paintings are battlefields onto which the viewer projects his or her own personal liberation from a social context that subordinates individual desires to that of the collective, utilitarian good. 

This may explain the international appeal of her work. Every society by definition tries to repress the individual--even the most advanced ones. Garcia’s paintings are deeper and more primal than many artists dare to go.

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I was editing this article at the Center for Cuban Studies/The Cuban Art Space here in Chelsea, New York City when Rocío García herself rang the bell and walked through the door.

She is in town for an exhibition of her work at the Mishkin Gallery of Baruch College and wanted to see the Pasatiempos exhibit at the Center for Cuban Studies/The Cuban Art Space, where she has exhibited her work in the past and has many pieces for sale. In fact, she was the Cuban Art Space's first artist-in-residence in the fall of 2010.

I chatted with her for a little while and she taught me a Cubanismo expression that I had never heard before: El ojo del amo engorda el caballo (“The eye of the master makes the horse fatter”).

That is to say, if you value what you have, what you have gains value.

I thought this aphorism resonated perfectly with what I had been trying to convey in this article about why Rocío García’s work is so wonderful and important: When a society celebrates the diversity of its members (sexual, or otherwise), we all prosper. However, when people are forced into secrecy and they hide their lifestyles from society, we all suffer.

Please be sure to check out Rocío García’s work at the Mishkin Gallery in New York City in late-April/early May as part of the Sí, Cuba festival, and watch the 2-part interview with her by Sandra Levinson and video-grapher Jenny Hellman that I translated and subtitled.

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Alexander Nixon is the Organizational Development Coordinator at the Center for Cuban Studies/The Cuban Art Space. Rocío García will be at the Mishkin Gallery of Baruch College on April 28th, 2011 to discuss her work.