Update: Cuba Libre! in the Bronx, Arrechea in Houston, and Carmen Herrera Gets a Film for Her Birthday

Carmen Herrera is Turning 100, with a New Film. Advance birthday greetings to the artist, who celebrates her 100th birthday on May 31. In the meantime, a new documentary about Herrera, The 100 Years Show, will debut at the Hot Docs International Film Festival in Toronto in late April. Directed by Alison Klayman, the filmmaker behind the 2012 documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry, the film will screen in Toronto on April 28 and 29, and May 1. Well-wishers can leave birthday greetings for Herrera on the film’s website—look for the clickable banner at the top of each page.

Carlos Estévez in Zurich. Last month we interviewed Estévez about his show at Miami’s Pan American Art Projects (see below). He mentioned his solo show in Switzerland, and we wanted to give the details. Carlos Estévez: Taumaturgia opened March 14 at the Havana Galerie in Zurich, where it runs through May 30.

Arrechea in Brussels and Houston. At the Boghossian Foundation – Villa Empain in Brussels, Alexandre Arrechea’s 2003 video, The Garden of Mistrust, is part of Heaven and Hell: From Magic Carpets to Drones, an international group show that recasts magical dreams of flying in light of contemporary technologies of surveillance and warfare. Through September 6.

And in Houston, Arrechea is among the artists participating in The One and the Many: A Self-Portrait in Seven Parts, which opened last week at Project Row Houses in Houston. A community-based arts and culture organization based in one of Houston’s oldest African American communities, Project Row Houses opens seven row houses to visiting artists to show their work. Arrechea is exhibiting work from Architectural Elements / Elementos Arquitectónicos, a series of large-scale color photographs showing him holding stacks of building materials, inspired in part by City of Columns by Alejo Carpentier. On view through June 21.

Diango Hernández in Germany. Hernández is participating in Birds, Plants and a Chair, a five-artist show at Galerie Kadel Willborn in Dusseldorf, with the installation Opaque Waters. Consisting of a fragment of 1940s tablecloth mounted and hung as if an artwork (though behind heavy Plexiglas), and a silent audio amp, also hung on the wall, which serves as the support for a printed image—a map of past hurricanes in the Caribbean, with the island of Cuba almost obliterated by the storm lines. “Did I forget to mention the flying ducks printed on the tablecloth?” Hernández asks on his website. “I have amplified hurricanes from my living room while wild ducks were flying in silence.” The show runs through May 9.

Jorge Santos Marcos in Miami. Tomorrow evening, Santos Marcos opens Between Sigh and Silence, his solo show at the Miami Art Connection gallery. Curated by Píter Ortega Nuñez and Sibille Petit Muñoz, the show runs through May 2. Tomorrow night’s opening runs from 6 to 10 p.m.

2 More Shows at Pan American Art Projects. In addition to the Carlos Estévez show, Pan American has two related shows currently on view: Inside the Box, a group show of assemblage works by such artists as Ricardo Brey and Eduardo Ponjuán; and Politics, a second selection of assemblage works with a political focus—among them, Luis Cruz Azaceta’s Dissident Box. All three shows run through April 25.

And a Group Show at Juan Ruiz. You’ve got a little more than a week to catch Making Circles in the Water: Kcho, Carlos Lamas, Glexis Novoa, Carlos Quintana, and Rubén Torres Llorca, featuring new work by the five artists. The show closes at the Miami gallery on Saturday, April 11.

Cuba Libre! at the Bronx Museum. Celebrating the historic thaw-in-progress in Cuban-US relations, Cuba Libre! Works from the Shelley and Donald Rubin Private Collection reflects artists’ longstanding explorations of Cuba’s relations with the rest of the world, and what a thaw might mean for the island’s future. Featuring work by Eduardo Ponjuán, Humberto Castro, Tonel, Sandra Ramos, Carlos Garaicoa, and others, the show runs through June 21.

Cuban Photography in Chelsea. Last week saw the opening of The Light in Cuban Eyes, an exhibition of work by more than 20 artists—among them Pavel Acosta, Juan Carlos Alom, Raúl Cañibano, Glenda Léon, René Péña, and Lissette Solózano–at the Robert Mann Gallery. The show coincides with the publication of a photography book by the same title, edited by longtime Cuban photo scholar Madeleine P. Plonsker. On view through May 23.

Save the Date. This spring’s Cuban Culture Festival, organized by the American Friends of the Ludwig Foundation of Cuba, continues with the 16th edition of Havana Film Festival New York, opening next Thursday, April 9. We’ll have a festival preview next week, but meanwhile, here’s advance word on Carlos Quintana: Images of a Place that Never Existed. The artist’s first solo show in NYC will open at the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park on April 27.

And Needlework and Art in Havana. The Casa de la Obra Pía, in Havana’s old quarter, is presenting the exhibition Entre hilos, alas y pinceles (Among Threads, Wings, and Brushes), by artist Yudit Vidal Faife (Santa Clara, Cuba, 1979). Vidal Faife describes the show as a “sociocultural artistic project.” It includes 22 works that represent an artistic collaboration between the artist and artisans in the city of Trinidad, in central Cuba. The artist paints portraits on canvases crocheted and embroidered by twenty artisans who practice needlecraft handed down through generations. In her catalogue essay, historian Alicia García Santana observes that the show melds two components: needlework and painting; hand and mind; inherited tradition and learned professionalism; legacy and reaffirmation of an era. Entre hilos, alas y pinceles is on view through April 30.

UCLA Film Archive Restoring Pre-Revolutionary Films. According to an article earlier this year in Variety, the prestigious UCLA Film & Television Archive is partnering with the Cinemateca de Cuba to restore, exhibit, and distribute pre-Revolutionary Cuban cinema—the first such collaboration between the Cuban archive and a US organization. Though still in the research phase, the plan is to strike new prints with English subtitles, and for the restored films also to be digitized. The program is part of a project at the UCLA archive called Classic Latin American Cinema in Los Angeles. The UCLA archive is also working with archives in Mexico and Argentina. The project will result in a three-month screening series at the Los Angeles archive in late 2017, and a film series that will tour museums and archives in North America.

For your reading pleasure. The current issue of Art on Cuba has an interesting short interview of longtime Miami gallerist and collector Ramón Cernuda, conducted by Onedys Calvo, on the current Cuban art market. Read it here.