DiarySue Williamson writes about Havana
Thursday, March 5
The day at the 100 year old Plaza Hotel in old Havana starts at 8 am, with lounge-style piano music drifting down from the fifth floor restaurant into my bedroom window. Soothing. Very colonial. Not in character with the streets of the rest of old Havana, where fast Cuban rhythms being played by live bands in almost every restaurant track one's progress round the city.
It's my first morning in Havana, and after breakfast on the fifth floor terrace, I walk down to the Wilfredo Lam Centre, an elegant old Spanish colonial building which serves not only as exhibition space but also as the offices of the organizing committee of the 10th Havana Biennial. With curator Pepe Fernandez, I look at the three rooms where I will be exhibiting, beautiful spaces with shuttered doors looking down over the street, grey marble tiled floors and blue painted beamed ceilings.
I am the first artist to arrive for the Biennale, and will soon move to Cojimar, a small fishing town near Havana, to interact with the community and work on a public art project as part of the Biennale programme. Whatever I do there will be shown as work in progress alongside two other series of photographs documenting other projects in the past, Last Supper at Manley Villa, (1981-2008) an Egyptian project, What About El Max? (2003-4) and a 2007 video, W*A*S*H, a satire on the level of militarization encountered in Washington DC.
The Biennale has organized a volunteer artist to work with me as assistant and translator. Her name is Annia Alonso, and she will prove to be invaluable.
Friday, March 6
Following a television interview to be shown on Sunday night, Annia invites me to lunch in her apartment, part of a large house in the trendy suburb of Vedado. A printmaker and painter, she shows me her large collagraphs, a reflection of life in Cuba.
Her kitchen is tiny, but the vegetable stew, taken in the garden, with green lizards darting in the banana trees, is excellent.
Monday, March 9
Cojimar is known in the tourist industry as the town from where Ernest Hemingway fished, basing his acclaimed novella, The Old Man of the Sea on local captain Gregorio Fuentes. Every day, several tourist buses pull up opposite the Terrazza Restaurant, decorated within by photos of Hemingway. The tourists spill out for lunch, and a walk along the malecon, the seafront, to the bust of Hemingway cast in bronze supplied by propellers from the boats of the fishing community, before climbing back onto the bus and departing.
But Cojimar was also the point from which hundreds of Cubans left on small boats, trying to reach Miami, during the 'special period' in the mid nineties, when the United States allowed those who managed to get to the country to stay. Nearly every family in Cojimar has one or more members living in exile in the US. Foreign currency sent back to Havana is the lifeblood which sustains the families back home.
Tuesday, March 10
A number of artists live in Cojimar too. By now, I am installed at the hotel Villa Panamericana, in the new part of Cojimar, and on my first morning here, ceramacist Javier Herrera and his sculptor wife Teresa Bravo come to meet Annia and I to give us a walking tour of the town. On a central point of the main road into town, stands a beautiful building, its pink paint flaking off, derelict but still imposing, the empty windows overlooking the town. It was apparently once a hotel named Campoamor. Field of Love. What a great name. Later it became a sanatorium.
I wonder if it would be possible to somehow work here for my public art project. It would be interesting to bring its deserted verandahs back to life again, if only briefly. Will have to investigate.
Thursday, March 12
Since I was last in Havana, three years ago, the bus service has improved enormously. A pink bus which goes from near the Panamericana Hotel, on the outskirts of Cojimar, to the Capitolio in central Havana, the white domed
building which is the seat of Cuban government and the architectural double of the Capitol in Washington DC, leaves every 10 minutes or so. The fare is the smallest silver coin in my purse.
Diagonally opposite the Capiltolio is the Parque Centrale, the public space in the centre of the city where every day crowds of men (only men) can be seen gesticulating and arguing furiously every day. Debating political change in Cuba? No.
Apparently the exclusive subject of debate is baseball, particularly pertinent at the moment since the World Baseball Championships are in full swing, and the performance of the Cuban team is a source of intense national pride.
Friday, March 13
This obsession with baseball is hindering my project. Isabel Martinez, a curator born in Cojimer and lifelong resident of the town - is helping me make contact with the authentic (rather than the black market) fishermen, and the message has been passed back to me that they cannot possibly meet for discussions until after the baseball championships are over, as they work all day and watch baseball every night.
And time is passing.
In the meantime, Annia and I have interviewed a worker who spent 40 years employed at a factory which is now derelict, a deserted structure on the beach at Cojimar. Once a caramelo - sweets - factory, the family which owned it left for Miami at the time of the revolution. After it became the property of the government, the factory fell into disuse and ruin.
Saturday, March 14
I am enjoying my stay at the Villa Panamericano. Built in the 90s, it is a conference hotel. Either the dining room at breakfast is full of chattering delegates, piling their plates high with the sugary cakes which are the mainstay of the breakfast buffet, or I am alone in the dining room, with six uniformed waiters standing at attention, their gaze fixed upon me, poised to whip away my plate the minute I have swallowed the last scrap of tortilla.
Tuesday, March 17
I interview Amalia, one of the grand old ladies of Cojimar. Her husband, now dead, fished with Hemingway. Her son left for America, and died there, clearly a very sensitive subject with Amalia.
Wednesday, March 18
Isabel Martinez takes me to the Marianao studio, Espace 08, of four young artists she represents to meet them, and to see their work. Unusually for Cuban artists, they have a large working space each, and metalworking equipment.
Ruslan Torres works on translating printed forms such as ration books and applications for US visas into grids which he reinterprets as paintings and sculptures. Jorge Marin is in the process of turning the word 'word' cursively written in metal into a scale model of a rollercoaster ride. Both pertain to the Cuban situation. It's always great to meet artists on their homeground, and learn more about their work.
Sunday, March 22
By now, all the other South African artists are here, except for Berni Searle. Tonight, Husain and Hasan Essop, Dan Halter, Andrew Putter, Minnette Vári and I meet for mojitas on the Plaza de Catedral, next to the Wilfredo Lam Centre. Like most of us, Andrew brought his work with him to save shipping costs, and somehow it has got lost en route.
The Biennale opens in five days' time. I have started to paint letters for a text to be put up on the old Campoamor Hotel building in Cojimar, working in the space I will later exhibit in, but permission to erect the text has not yet been given by the Cojimar authorities.
Ahead lies a battle to complete my project as I wish.
*The second part of this diary will appear in the May update. Sue Williamson will also write an overview of the 10th Havana Biennale
