“SINCE THE WHORES HAD GONE: URBAN SPACE, EROTICISM, DOCUMENT, AND POLITICS”. A conversation on Cuban Photography of the 90’s by art critic and curator Juan Antonio Molina “There were gay streets in Havana where only Negroes lived and there were some very tough streets and tough quarters, such as Jesús María, which was just a short distance away. But this part of town was just as sad as it had been ever since the whores had gone”. Ernest Hemingway; “Islands in the Stream” SINCE THE WHORES HAD GONE is the title of the book in process that brings together newspaper articles, essays, and chronicles, written during the last 20 years by Juan Antonio Molina on contemporary Cuban Photography. The book will also include subjects as the representations of urban space, the relationship between photography and poetry, body, fiction, staging, and the different alternatives of what the author called New Documentary in Cuba. Parallel to these reflections, the essay opens a space on identity and rootlessness, aesthetic utopia and political disenchantment, as well as memory and the recent national history. JUAN ANTONIO MOLINA (Havana, 1965) Art critic, professor and independent curator, Juan Antonio Molina was a researcher and curator for the Fototeca Nacional de Cuba and for the Wifredo Lam Center - which organizes the Havana Biennial. In Mexico he was a contributor to the Fototeca Nacional of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, and for the Centro de la Imagen (Images Center?) of the Centro Nacional de las Artes. In 2009, he was the coordinator of the XIII Bienal de Fotografía of Mexico, organized by the Centro de la Imagen and the Centro Nacional de las Artes. Between June and December 2009, Molina was the coordinator of the Seminar of Contemporary of the Centro de la Imagen. Juan Antonio Molina is one of the contributors to the book and exhibition Mapas abiertos. Fotografía latinoamericana (1991-2002), organized by the Institute of Culture of Barcelona and the Fundación Telefónica, who was held in Madrid and Barcelona and traveled throughout several countries in Europe and Latin America. He also organized several exhibitions such as Herejías: Iconografías de Pedro Meyer (Centro de laImagen, México, 2008), Presencia flagrante: Marcos López y Rubén Ortiz Torres (Centro de la Imagen, México, 2009) and El baño. La fotografía contemporánea entre lo público y lo privado (2011-2012). In recent years, Molina has taught and lectured at The Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, The Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León, The Universidad Veracruzana, and The Instituto Potosino de Bellas Artes among others. His writings have been published in Aperture, Arte al Dia International, Replicant, C International Photo Magazine, Arte Cubano, Encuentros de la Cultura Cubana, Fisura, Arte y Naturaleza, Origina, Tierra Adentro, Atlántica Internacional de las Artes, and Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y el Caribe, among other journals. Already In the 1990s, Juan Antonio Molina was one of the major promoters and critics of photography in Cuba, as well as the curator of the exhibition El voluble rostro de la realidad. Siete fotógrafos cubanos, which opened in Havana in 1996. He currently leads the project “Página en blando: curatorial works, criticism and art education” in Mexico City.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 03:32:09 +0000
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