HAVANA, Cuba – The passage of Hurricane Oscar, which later became a tropical storm, through the province of Guantánamo, left a trail of destruction and physical losses in that territory; As a tribute to this sad event in the Cuban Upper East, the visual artist Yulier Rodríguez (Yulier P.) recreated the disaster scene in a new work titled Abandoned.
With Abandonedthe young painter wanted to reflect “the poor management of the Government that created the scenario for many people to die victims of this meteorological phenomenon” in the municipalities of Baracoa, Maisí, Imías and San Antonio del Sur.
Precisely the hurricane Oscar, category one on the Saffir-Simpson scale, made landfall in the easternmost province of Cuba in the middle of the collapse of the National Electroenergetic System on October 18, 19 and 20.
As a consequence of the lack of electricity, many Cubans in that territory were unaware of the formation and impact of the meteorological event and were not able to take shelter in time. The result: dozens of people injured, eight dead and two missing; as well as homes and crops destroyed by the strong floods.
“It is an image that evokes people drowning, crying out for life, crying out to be saved above all things, it is a scene that transmits that type of vibe, that they are desperate in the middle of a storm and are about to die” , declared the artist to CubaNet.
Abandoned It is part of the series Giftsemerged in 2016 when Yulier Rodríguez began to be harassed by State Security. The series has continued intermittently in his artistic work.
“There are seasons that I spend doing it, I stop and then I start again at another time, because it requires a lot of time and effort,” said Rodríguez, basically self-taught and censored since 2017.
“You have to look for a work that is in the street, a collapse, some ruins, in a piece of rubble, you look for it in any area of Havana, you take it to the house, you clean it, you intervene with the image, then “You put it in a significant place that is related to the same discourse of the work, then you take the photo and edit it, it is a very laborious series,” he added.
Likewise, the young painter, creator of enormous canvases with amorphous creatures and with protesting works against the Cuban dictatorship, assured that the intention of continuing with the series is repeated when he needs to give his opinion or “question something that is directly affecting Cubans.”
“When I see situations that are continuous, that have a direct responsibility of the Government towards the citizens, I always try to do a work and resort to this type of work as a tool or as a mechanism of expression, of criteria, to channel everything we are living, what people are experiencing and taking it to work as a kind of denunciation, a call, a cry,” he acknowledged.
TO end of january This year, Yulier P. responded with a work titled “The artistry of Gío Gío” to a grotesque painting by Daymé Arocena made by the National Fine Arts Prize winner Nelson Domínguez, to “place Nelson in the same context where he placed Daymé ”.
