MADRID, Spain.- The exhibition “Nothing is like before”, curated by the Cuban Abel González Fernández, is exhibited these days at the Hessel Museum of the Center for Curatorial Studies of Bard College, in New York.
The exhibition, inaugurated on April 1 and which will remain until May 28, exhibits pieces by Cubans Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara and Kevin Ávila, as well as the Americans Liz Cohen, Luis Gispert and Jori Minaya, among others.
According to the museum’s explanation in its websitethe title of the exhibition is taken from a song by reggaeton artist Bad Bunny, “known for his political activism.”
The works of art on display, produced over the last two decades, show traces of reggaeton as a cultural movement, —which “embraces decolonization, and questions traditional machismo (…)—, illuminating the exchange between artistic practice and pop culture in a postcolonial context, adds the information.
As specified Abel González Fernández through his Instagram account, “Nothing is like before” explores “representations of the Latinx experience through symbols such as the tropical landscape, the sexualized body and ornaments such as jewelry, around the figure of the reggaeton star Bad Bunny.
Graduated from the University of Havana and living in the United States since 2019, Fernández is one of the authors of the web series “Without 349”where together with the artists Lester Álvarez Meno and Kevin Ávila, he recounts, through the testimonies of several of its protagonists, the history of the opposition by Cuban artists, journalists and activists to Decree 349.
Last October, he inaugurated at the Wallach Art Gallery of Columbia University, New York, the collective exhibition entitled “Without Authorization: Contemporary Cuban Art.” The show, curated together with the American Gwen A. Unger, exhibited works by protesting Cuban artists.
