Ten years in the past, GALLERIA CONTINUA grew to become the primary worldwide modern artwork gallery to determine a everlasting presence in Cuba. A decade later, the gallery celebrates this pioneering chapter with “La Capacidad de Soñar / The Capability to Dream”, a significant group exhibition that includes 40 Cuban artists. The anniversary program will prolong all through the month of Could with performances, occasions, and creative encounters that may spotlight the richness and dynamism of Cuba’s modern scene.
This celebration in Havana follows the fifteenth anniversary of the gallery’s Beijing house earlier this yr, and precedes the thirty fifth anniversary of its founding website in San Gimignano this September—which will probably be marked by solo exhibitions by Yoan Capote and Alicja Kwade, alongside a collective present. Collectively, these milestones mirror GALLERIA CONTINUA’s function as a forerunner in creating world, destination-based artwork areas, and its enduring dedication to constructing bridges throughout cultures and ages by means of modern artwork, typically venturing past the traditional tracks of the artwork scene.
“The driving supreme behind our gallery is that artwork, just like the wind, shouldn’t be stopped by borders. If this had been only a assertion or a normal precept, we wouldn’t have settled in Cuba. The form of work that defines GALLERIA CONTINUA–each on and off the island–is participatory, inclusive, beneficiant, and extraordinary in its love for artwork and its dedication to overcoming boundaries. These are values now we have discovered, cherished, and shared with the Cuban individuals.”
—Mario Cristiani, Lorenzo Fiaschi and Maurizio Rigillo, Founders of GALLERIA CONTINUA
A standout second in GALLERIA CONTINUA’s historical past in Cuba occurred on December 16, 2014, when artist Michelangelo Pistoletto enacted his iconic image of the Third Paradise on the ocean off the coast of Havana. The efficiency, organized in collaboration with curator Laura Salas Redondo, the artist Kcho and the fishermen of Havana, was a poetic gesture symbolizing renewal and steadiness between nature and society. Remarkably, the very subsequent day, on December 17, 2014, the governments of Cuba and america introduced the historic resumption of diplomatic relations after greater than 5 a long time of pressure. This highly effective coincidence underscored the gallery’s dedication to fostering dialogue by means of modern artwork and confirmed the need of building a long-term presence in Cuba to proceed selling cross-cultural understanding and engagement.
Throughout the twelfth Havana Biennial (Could 2015), GALLERIA CONTINUA took over the Águila de Oro, a former Forties cinema positioned within the coronary heart of Havana’s Chinatown, to current Perimetro, a site-specific paintings by Daniel Buren. Later that yr GALLERIA CONTINUA formalized its presence in Cuba in that very same house beneath habana the identify Arte CONTINUA Habana. The primary exhibition,Anclados en el Territorio, opened on November 27, 2015, and featured six Cuban artists, Alejandro Campins, Elizabet Cerviño, Carlos Garaicoa, Susana Pilar, Reynier Leyva Novo and José Yaque. Every artist explored and responded to the positioning’s layered historical past— its structure, its previous as a cinema, its location in Chinatown, and its broader Cuban context—by means of new commissions and research- primarily based creative interventions.
By remodeling this historic website right into a hub for modern artwork, GALLERIA CONTINUA reaffirmed its mission to bridge cultural legacies – because it has executed throughout its eight areas worldwide—fostering a dialogue between Cuba’s wealthy cultural heritage and its evolving creative panorama.
For ten years, GALLERIA CONTINUA has performed a major function in introducing Cuban artists to worldwide audiences and bringing world artists to Cuba. Notable highlights from 2016 embrace Anish Kapoor’s solo exhibition on the gallery house, Michelangelo Pistoletto’s main solo present at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and an exhibition by Jannis Kounellis on the Wifredo Lam Modern Artwork Centre. From this time, Arte CONTINUA Habana has hosted quite a few vital exhibitions, enriching a typical imaginative and prescient between Cuban and worldwide artists together with Chen Zhen, Hans Op de Beeck, Zhanna Kadyrova, Jorge Macchi, Pascale Marthine Tayou, and Julio Le Parc, amongst others—alongside a vibrant neighborhood of proficient Cuban artists whom we at the moment are proud to have fun.
The gallery represents quite a few Cuban artists, starting with Carlos Garaicoa, who has performed a pivotal function in fostering cultural alternate by means of his Artista x Artista program, which facilitates residencies and cultural exchanges between Cuban and worldwide artists. Over time, the gallery has expanded its native roster to incorporate artists who’ve achieved worldwide recognition, equivalent to Alejandro Campins, Yoan Capote, Iván Capote, Elizabet Cerviño, Osvaldo González, José Mesías, Luis López-Chávez, Susana Pilar, and José Yaque.
Past exhibitions, GALLERIA CONTINUA additionally labored extensively in public areas with initiatives equivalent to Daniel Buren’s Promenades à La Havane—a collection of site-specific interventions put in on doorways and all through the streets of town—and JR’s GIANTS, Alain and ephemeral public set up, which reworked the facet wall of the gallery right into a vibrant murals throughout thirteenth Havana Biennial (April 2019). The gallery additionally promotes academic initiatives, providing workshops, conferences, and performances that have interaction each native and worldwide communities. These applications intention to make use of artwork as a non-verbal language to bridge cultural divides and foster intercultural understanding.
The present brings collectively 40 Cuban artists—rising and established, from each on and off the island— with whom the gallery has collaborated over the previous decade. The exhibition continues a story developed throughout the gallery’ areas all over the world by means of numerous chapters of “The Capability to Dream.”
Collaborating artists:
Juan Carlos Alom, Balada Tropical, Abel Barroso, Alejandro Campins, Yoan Capote, Iván Capote, Celia & Yunior, Laura Carralero, Yaima Carrazana, Elizabet Cerviño, Gabriel Cisneros, Ariamna Contino, Raúl Cordero, Arlés del Río, Susana Pilar Delahante, Jenny Feal, Leandro Feal, Joaquín Ferrer, Diana Fonseca, Carlos Garaicoa, Rocío García, Flavio Garciandía, Alejandro González, Osvaldo González, Álex Hernández, Orestes Hernández, Reynier Leyva Novo, Luis López Chávez, Carlos Martiel, Yornel Martínez, José Mesías, Yanelis Mora, Michel Pérez Pollo, Eduardo Ponjuán, Wilfredo Prieto, Ángel Ricardo Ríos, René Francisco Rodríguez, Lázaro Saavedra, José Yaque
