“Art urges voyages,” wrote poet Gwendolyn Brooks, “and it is easier to stay at home….”

Cuba and Beyond is a collection of four exhibits now at the Sangre de Cristo Arts and Conference Center in Pueblo, Colorado.  Whether your personal voyage would be to explore cultural identities, to venture into the world of the transcultural – that complex merging and converging of cultures – or simply to travel the distance to Pueblo, Cuba and Beyond is worth your effort.

The art

The Art of Leandro Soto

Walking into the gallery exhibit entitled “Cuba in the Southwest:  The Art of Leandro Soto” is like walking into Wonderland.  Soto was one of the first in his generation to explore  intercultural issues and Cubanidad, or Cuban-ness; he’s lived in many different places over time, including the U.S. Southwest for eight years.  Soto layers, intermingles and blends images of his Cuban heritage and his adopted cultures into his pieces.  “I work with the complexity of being Cuban, a cultural heritage that is composed of diverse cultural presences,” he says.  “In my view, that which is apparently dispersed or diffused is also linked to the magical….”

Carlos Manuel Cardenes’ photographs line foyer walls throughout the building.  In “Faces: 100 Cuban Artists,” Cardenes pays breathtaking tribute to the artists who began arriving in the U.S. in the 1960s.  Some of these artists are featured in the other two exhibits:  “women.embodied: Cuban Women’s Art from the Diaspora” and “CAFÉ XII: The Journeys of Writers and Artists of the Cuban Diaspora.”

One striking aspect of “CAFÉ XII” is the absence of frames on almost every piece.  The art is, instead, fully “installed” on the walls. Extensions of each work are painted out onto the walls of the gallery. This makes the merging tangible on yet another level. It creates a sense of fluid boundaries that speak to adaptation and survival; it suggests the possibility of honoring and preserving one’s own unique heritage while living in shared society.

CAFÉ XII

CAFÉ XII

Cuba and Beyond is colorful, exciting, provocative, honest, distinctive and accessible.  Every voyage it launches will be unique to each voyager.

Lessons about diversity and inclusion

I thought about these exhibits – and you should, too – as a free educational opportunity for anyone who wants to learn or talk about Cuban experience, diversity and culture with colleagues, friends or family members.  Each exhibit, however, will urge you further into the human experience.

We are living in a time of extreme polarization, when folks are lightning quick to define “us” and “them” and then increasingly ferocious in assigning blame.  Maybe it is possible to take a lesson from these artists of the Cuban diaspora and see that we are, in fact, one with the world we create and we do have choices.  Cuba and Beyond illustrates the possibilities in choosing, even under dire circumstances, to merge and preserve.

If you can’t make it to Pueblo but will be in Colorado, learn more about Cuba Transnational and related events through October 2011.   The Sangre de Cristo exhibits are curated by Andrea O’Reilly Herrera, Grisel Pujalá, Karin Larkin and Soto.  If you are unable to make it to Colorado at all,  Herrera has written a book about the ongoing CAFÉ project: Cuban Artists Across the Diaspora: Setting the Tent Against the House.