[Juanma García: The city contains within it the artist]
I am back at the NCSML this week to write about the final artist whose work appears in Artists as Activists: Cuban painter and sculptor Juanma García. With a portfolio comprised of colored pencil sketches, acrylic paintings, and wooden sculptures, García is the most ‘traditional’ artist featured in the exhibit, but his work is no less controversial or political. García’s work is created with a Cuban audience in mind, as he reimagines buildings, monuments, and symbols recognizable to locals, but abstract to outsiders. Most visitors to the Czech and Slovak Museum are outsiders to Cuban heritage, myself included, so I have done some researching, translating, and reading to identify the recurring symbols in García’s paintings.
García’s 2016 painting, Delayed Flight, bridges the gap between American and Cuban history. He depicts the 1925 Monument to the Victims of the USS Maine in Havana, a structure built in commemoration of the US Battleship which exploded in Havana Harbor in 1898 and jumpstarted the Spanish-American War. In 1961, the eagle with outstretched wings which crowned the monument was removed in an attempt to lessen the imperialist feel of the monument. In Delayed Flight, García has replaced the bronze eagle with a commercial airplane, already in flight, symbolizing the inevitability of American influence on Cuban society.
In 2017, García painted Seppuku in remembrance of Cuban independence from Spain. The left half of the canvas shows a reimagining of the Cuban flag with a sword bisecting it, while nationalist leader José Martí points to the sword from the right half of the canvas. The title ‘seppuku’ is a reference to the samurai practice of ritual suicide to escape dishonor, a parallel to the bloody fight for Cuban independence to escape submission to Spanish conquerors.
García’s 2018 painting, Dazzle Effect, is featured in Artists as Activists at the NCSML. García reduces Cuba to a small island surrounded by a wall painted in dazzle camouflage, a style used by the American and British Navies during WWI and WWII. The only building on the island, the Palace of the Revolution, which houses the Cuban government, is placed under a high-flying Cuban flag. In Dazzle Effect, the Cuban government has taken over the entire island of Cuba and attempts to isolate and hide it from the rest of the world.
García is one of my favorite artists I have researched for the exhibit because I admire the way he uses history in his artwork to weave hidden meanings into his pieces that many may overlook at first glance.
Nights at the Museum 