The foundation National Art Exhibitions of the Mentally Inc (NAEMI)focused on the so-called “outsider art”, opens this Saturday in the US city of Miami an exhibition with works by renowned firms of “marginal art” such as the Cubans Jorge Alberto Cadi “El Buzo” and Misleidys Castillo.
The exhibition “Ousider Art: Revealing Masters of Hidden Art” will be open this Saturday at The ArtSpace gallery, on central Miami’s 8th Street, and features works from the NAEMI collection made with different techniques.
In addition to the aforementioned Cuban artists, Damián Valdés Dilla and Rigoberto Casorla (Rigo) are exhibiting, along with other renowned creators such as Yaniel Agrafojo, Isaac Crespo and Gloria de la Caridad Castillo, according to a statement from the foundation.
“What attracts me most in the art of people in mental recovery, and in ‘outsider’ art, is the authenticity and originality of these creators; art that escapes the norms and conformism of the majority of contemporary art”, he said this Friday to EFE Juan Martín, executive director of NAEMI, in charge of the exhibition.
Cuban ‘Outsiders’ at Documenta in Kassel
The new exhibition, which follows another opened earlier this year also in Miami, coincides with the presence of works by three NAEMI-sponsored artists at the renowned Documenta contemporary art show.
Along with the Venice Biennale, one of the most important in the world for contemporary art, Documenta is held in Kassel, Germany, every five years and will be open to the public for its fifteenth edition until September 25.
Martín, who houses 1,200 works of “outsider art” in NAEMI’s permanent collection and is looking for a partner to make exchanges, stated that for him it is “a great honor” that these artists now exhibit at Documenta.
They are the Cubans Damián Valdés, Boris Santamaría and Carlos “El Profe”.
Precisely, Valdés is one of the signatures of “Arte Ousider: Revealing Masters of Hidden Art”, from Miami, pointed out Martín, who pointed out that these artists rarely give their works titles.
He also explained that the works of Cuban “outsider art” that are exhibited at Documenta in Germany do not belong to the NAEMI collections, but have arrived there thanks to the renowned plastic artist and opposition activist Tania Bruguerawho organized the exhibition.
Bruguera directs the Hannah Arendt International Institute of Artivism (INSTAR), based in Havana, which has been invited to the current edition of Documenta.
According to the NAEMI foundation, “’outsider art’ refers to incredibly unique works produced by artists who have not been formally trained in art, work outside the mainstream art scene, and have unconventional worldviews.”
Also called “art brut”, it sometimes has its origin in collections of European psychiatric hospitals of the 19th century, where doctors clinically analyzed the work, he adds.
The artist Damián Valdés “is admitted right now to a psychiatric hospital in Havana”, while Boris Santamaría is “a homeless (homeless) in Cuba,” explained Martín.
Last February, NAEMI also opened the exhibition “The Language Game” in Miami, with 40 works by artists with mental illnesses focused on text as plastic expression, something present in the so-called “outsider art” since 1919 .
