Cuban Art in the Diaspora

Literary and art critic Andrea O’Reilly Herrera analyzes an itinerant art exhibition known as CAFÉ (Cuban American Foremost Exhibitions), curated by Leandro Soto (b. 1956) since 2001. O’Reilly Herrera argues that the artists participating in this exhibition raise many of the same issues as earlier vanguardia artists in Cuba, including the significance of the island’s African and Indigenous roots, landscape, and architecture, although they do not claim to represent the entire Cuban diaspora. Still, O’Reilly Herrera’s analysis of the artworks of several cafeteros, such as Soto, José Bedia, and Raúl Villarreal, identifies recurrent themes and common concerns, especially with displacement and transculturation that, in the end, “allude to the all-embracing nature of Cuban culture itself.”