Update: Summer Shows in Havana, Río, Mexico City, Andalusia and NYC

A Milestone in Havana. Congratulations to Villa Manuela Gallery, which just opened a group exhibition celebrating its 10th anniversary. With close to 20 artists on view, the show includes work by Belkis Ayón, Abel Barroso, René Francisco, Choco, Sandra Ramos, and Mabel Poblet.

García de la Nuez too. Also in Havana, Mis dos islas is a solo show by Carlos García de la Nuez, recently opened at Galería Habana. The exhibition runs through August 22.

René Francisco in Brazil. At Casa Daros Rio in Río de Janeiro, Paintings pairs Francisco with Brazilian Vânia Mignone—“two contrasting artists,” notes the Casa Daros Rio website, “that complement each other when contemplated together.” The show runs through August 8.

Atelier Morales and Douglas Argüelles in Mexico. At Nina Menocal Gallery in Mexico City, projects by Atelier Morales (Juan Luis Morales and Teresa Ayuso) are in the spotlight. Atelier Morales’s Archaeology takes its inspiration from a poem of the same name by the Cuban poet Eliseo Diego, which speaks of families departing the island over the years. In its project, Atelier Morales presents photographs of Havana homes with the poem projected, and disappearing, on the background. Douglas Argüelles takes a conceptual approach to the state of contemporary artmaking, juxtaposing images of beauty, wealth, and commerce—a field of flowers, a bank vault, and Sotheby’s auction house—to comment on the pressures and preconceptions that shape artistic practice today. Both exhibitions run through August.

Miami Goes to Andalusia. Last week saw the opening of Trajectos de ida y vuelta: gráfica transibérica desde Miami (Round Trips: Trans-Iberian Graphics from Miami) a group show at the Museo de Huelva in Huelva, Andalucia. The artists include Víctor Gómez, Sergio Payares, Néstor Arenas, Joaquín González, Baruj Salinas, and Gustavo Acosta. The show runs through August 31.

Matheu in Miami. And back in Miami, Leonel Matheu: Crossroads of the Dystopia opened at the Frost Art Museum. Curated by Cuban Art News contributor Janet Batet, the show is the artist’s first museum survey, looking back at some 20 years of work. Most emblematic of Matheu’s art, writes Batet, is an “enigmatic head—a sort of dome” that she describes as a constant throughout his work. “Self-portrait and collective portrayal of a nation marked by diaspora and dystopia,” Batet writes, “this symbol embodies the symptoms and stigma of contemporary global society.” The show includes pencil and ink drawings, oil paintings, video, and installations, and runs through September 14.

Bags and Boxes in NYC. Summer takes an artisanal turn at the Center for Cuban Studies’ Cuban Art Space, where Bags, Boxes and More / Jabas, cajas y más shows off the Center’s collection of handcrafted bags, carryalls, and imaginative approaches to the concept of the “box”—along with a selection of paintings by island artists. On view through September 6. And mark your calendar: the Cuban Art Space’s 15th-anniversary celebration takes place on September 8.

Opening Today: SuperPuesto in the Bronx. If you haven’t yet made it to the Bronx Museum of the Arts for Beyond the Supersquare—a thought-provoking look at the influence of Latin American and Caribbean modernist architecture on contemporary art—one more reason was added today: the opening of SuperPuesto, a temporary pavilion by artist Terence Gower. Inspired by Marcel Breuer’s modernist House in the Museum Garden, exhibited in the MoMA sculpture garden in 1949, SuperPuesto brings the clean lines of modernist architecture to the traditional form of the puesto, or market stall, found throughout Latin America. SuperPuesto is open to the public through September 28; Beyond the Supersquare runs through January 11.

Opening Saturday: Contemporisha in Miami. “Cuban religion is as syncretic as it is exotic and it is a very particular kind of spirituality,” writes Cuban photographer Alejandro Calzada Miranda. “In this series, I attempted to articulate Cuban religious deities without resorting to traditional iconography and keeping in mind that the images of Cuban Orishas are like that of the Greek gods, deities which are equal parts god and human. This is how I became interested in exploring how the everyday Cuban holds that spark of divinity that allows the Orishas to survive in today’s Cuba.” Calzada Miranda’s photographs are on view in Contemporisha – Spirit of Modern Deities, which opens with a VIP celebration this Saturday, July 19, at CU–1 Gallery in downtown Miami. Part of the Cultural Evolution 2014 series—which last month brought MalPaso Dance Company to Miami for its local debut—Contemporisha runs through August 1.

Next Week: Bruguera Speaks at the Guggenheim. As one of the public programs for Under the Same Sun: Art from Latin America Today, Tania Bruguera will take part in a conversation with performance artist Karen Finley. With their common interest in using art to question power and achieve social justice—as well as creating strong works in their own right—it should be an interesting discussion. 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 22, at the Guggenheim. Tickets are free for students with an RSVP; RSVP or buy tickets here.

Fusco to MIT. Congratulations to artist and writer Coco Fusco, who is headed to MIT this fall as part of the university’s MLK Visiting Professors and Scholars Program, which was founded in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. Fusco will teach in the Comparative Media Studies/Writing program in MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, where she’ll  be hosted by program head Edward Schiappa and Pulitzer Prize-winning author and MIT professor Junot Díaz. Fusco will serve at MIT through the 2014-2015 academic year.