Vidente opens in Havana. This past week saw the opening of Vidente (Clairvoyant), a new exhibition by Marta María Pérez. Though Pérez is best known for her photography, Vidente includes not only nine black-and-white images from her Travesía (Crossing) series, but six videos in their first presentation on the island. With suggestive titles like Un secreto (A Secret), Un acuerdo (A Deal), and Un camino oscuro (A Dark Path), the videos are part of a project shown earlier this year in the Grand Canary Islands. As in other works, Pérez focuses on the relationship between the material and spiritual worlds, and on the nature of self and identity. Cuban critic Juan Antonio Molina writes that Pérez’s works “are religious in that they display her own religion. They do not depict the way others relate to holy things, but the way she, the artist, does.” Vidente is presented at the Villa Nueva gallery of the National Union of Cuban Artists and Writers (UNEAC) through January 20.
Cuban Artists Join the Crowd in Urbanitas. There’s a cosmopolitan crowd on view at Pan American Art Projects in Miami, where the group show Urbanitas explores the city as theme and creative inspiration. Cuba is well represented, with such artists as Luis Enrique Camejo, Gustavo Acosta, Luis Cruz Azaceta and Carlos Estévez joining Argentines Santiago Porter, Carlos Gallardo and Graciela Sacco, Iceland-born Magnus Sigurdarson and American Tracey Snelling. Urbanitas runs through February 4.
Cuban Play Coming to New York’s Times Square. Breve temporada de invierno (Brief Winter Season), a comedy by Cuban playwright Nicolas Dorr, will be among the opening-night presentation in the first Times Square International Theater Festival. Running January 16-22, the new festival will feature works from three continents. In Dorr’s play, an aging actress reluctantly reconciles with her longtime assistant and sometime lover, to bittersweet comic effect. Presented in Spanish by the Maranao Theater Company, Breve temporada de invierno will be performed by actors hailing from Puerto Rico and Argentina, under Puerto Rican director Josean Ortiz. Performances are scheduled for Monday, January 16; Saturday, January 21; and Sunday, January 22.
Last Chance to See. Many of the exhibitions covered in Cuban Art News this fall are nearing the end of their runs, making this week and next the best—and only—opportunities to catch these shows. First to go is Enrique Martínez Celaya’s installation Schneebett, which closes at the Miami Art Museum on New Year’s Day. Closing a week later on Sunday, January 8: Transcultural Pilgrim: Three Decades of Work by José Bedia at the Fowler Museum at UCLA in Los Angeles . . . María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Journeys at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville . . . and Humberto Calzada: The Fire Next Time at the Frost Museum of Art at FIU in Miami.
