On Art and Other Trades in Turn of Millennium Cuba: A Conversation with Alexandre Arrechea

Abstract

This interview seeks to analyse the dynamics of the Cuban cultural context at the end of the millennium. To do so, it examines the work of Alexandre Arrechea, a former member of the collective Los Carpinteros. During the 1980s Cuban art had held an important position as a space for social and political criticism, replacing other spaces and becoming a major centre for discussion in the public sphere. That process changed substantially in the following decade as the country entered the Special Period and with the increasing attention of the international art market on the Cuban art sphere. This interview looks at the decisive years in which Cuban art became appreciated and consumed internationally, recovering the voices of some of the main actors in that process, such as Gerardo Mosquera, Carlos Garaicoa and Sandra Ramos. While the work of Los Carpinteros has been analysed several times, the oeuvre of Arrechea, one of the major creative voices from the Caribbean in the new century, has not received the same focus. The present discussion aims to fill this gap, by looking at his work as a whole and discussing issues related to migration and spectatorship, creativity and representation.