After two days of academic exchanges held at the Holguin Provincial Center for Visual Arts and the Náyade Proenza Hall of the Higher Institute of Arts. The Fifth Colloquium on Critical and Historiographical Studies of Visual Arts concluded.
The meeting, which brought together researchers, artists, and specialists from the region. It was structured around a diverse thematic spectrum that included topics ranging. From the impact of artificial intelligence on artistic creation to a review of graphic and institutional traditions specific to eastern Cuba.
The jury awarded the main prize to the research project “The Body as Ethnographic Text: Towards a Historiography of Bodily Aesthetics in Holguin Visual Arts (1962-2024),” presented by Ronald Guillén Campos.
Photo: Yeema Martínez Yee
Also receiving a special mention was the work “Devotion: A Sign of Spirituality Between the Artist and the People,” by student Geyler Mendoza Sánchez. Also whose approach to Marian faith, feminism, and the therapeutic dimension of art. Offered a renewed perspective on the relationship between popular religiosity and visual creation.
Photo: Yeema Martínez Yee
Moreover the final sessions included a discussion that served as a substantive closing: “Printmaking in Holguin and ‘The Craft of Seeing: Revisiting Two Essential Texts 20 Years Later.” Led by M.Sc. Ernesto Galván Peramo and Lic. Martín Antonio Garrido Gómez.
Also this discussion allowed for an update of two reference works for local graphic historiography. Establishing connections between the technical history of printmaking and contemporary practices in the province.
Among the other presentations were approaches to artificial intelligence and its artistic and cultural influence in Holguin (Javier Torres Zaldívar). Expressions of Protestantism in Holguin’s visual arts (Yolanda Rodríguez Hernández). The theoretical work of José Rojas Bez and his contributions to Cuban film thought (Jessie Souza Portelles). And studies on the history of the El Alba Academy (Dennys Valls Guzmán and Yosvani Rodríguez Batista).
Furthermore the program was rounded out by analyses of Cuban identity in the work of Jorge Luis Cudina (Eddy Quesada Velázquez and Nuvia Artigas Almarales). With the particularities of artist’s book production at the Cuadernos Papiro Publishing House (Elisbet Betancourt Macle).
At the close of the colloquium, the impression remained of a consolidated space for critical reflection on local art. Capable of articulating past and present without losing sight of the challenges that technological and discursive transformations pose to the historiography of visual arts in Holguin.
By: Yeema Martínez Yee
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