“The Lowe Art Museum proudly presents two exhibitions that are the most comprehensive presentation of Afro-Cuban art ever shown. After its debut in Cambridge, Harvard University’s exhibition organizers at the Afro-Latin American Research Institute selected the Lowe for ElPasado Mio/My Own Past: Afrodescendant Contributions to Cuban Art – the groundbreaking museum show that brings to light how Cuban artists of African descent were erased and sidelined. Concurrently, the Lowe is presenting the companion exhibition Afrocubanismo: Highlights from the Ramón and Nercys Cernuda Collection. These two exhibitions feature more than 100 works of art spanning 200 years (created between 1822 and 2022), showcasing 58 Cuban artists in a new way. 

There are a total of nine paintings by Wifredo Lam in these exhibitions, including rarely seen early works from 1926, 1931 and 1937. The Lowe’s iteration of El Pasado Mio/My Own Past has been expanded with works from local collections in Miami, doubling the number of historical works created before 1959. Women artists were also excluded from the canon of Cuban art history, and El Pasado Mio features works by eleven female artists who are being exhibited together for the first time.” – Lowe Art Museum

El Pasado Mio/My Own Past: Afrodescendant Contributions to Cuban Art

“El Pasado Mio/My Own Past restores critical omissions in the annals of Cuban art history by elevating Afrodescendant artists who have been overlooked, forgotten, or written out of the historical record. The Lowe is honored to present this transformational exhibition, which not only contextualizes these lost voices but also brings them into dialogue with contemporary artists, and artists from the Cuban Vanguardia,” says Dr. Jill Deupi, the Lowe Art Museum’s Beaux Arts Executive Director and Chief Curator. “The latter is the intention of Afrocubanismo: Highlights from the Ramón and Nercys Cernuda Collection, our companion exhibition which explores the complexities and contradictions of Afro-Cuban culture, which played a vital and persistent role in Cuban Modernism.”

The guest curator of both exhibitions is Dr. Alejandro de la Fuente, the Director of Harvard’s Afro-Latin American Research Institute. “Every artist in El Pasado Mio/My Own Past is Afrodescendant. This shows a different genealogy for Cuban art, because we are rescuing Afrodescendant figures who were sidelined by history and are presenting them with some of the most well-known Cuban artists who are also of African descent,” says de la Fuente. “We always wanted the city of Miami and the Lowe Art Museum to present this exhibition after Harvard. Both exhibitions are the first of their kind.”  

Afrocubanismo: Highlights from the Ramón and Nercys Cernuda Collection

“The concurrent exhibition Afrocubanismo: Highlights from the Ramón and Nercys Cernuda Collection is a parallel project meant to be viewed in conversation with El Pasado Mio/My Own Past. This exhibition presents a distinct group of artists, because all of them were racialized as white during their lives – except for Wifredo Lam, who is the only Afrodescendant artist in this exhibition. “Theirs is an external gaze – they were looking into the Afro-Cuban culture without really understanding it,” says Dr. de la Fuente. Afrocubanismo was a cultural movement – visual arts, literature and music – that emerged in the 1930s and peaked during the 1940s, during Cuba’s first Vanguardia wave. Many of these artists visited Paris in the 1920s. There they discovered, and were influenced by, the Parisian fascination with traditional sub-Saharan African art. On the one hand, some of these artists were seen as co-opting a history that was not theirs. Some of their works are seen as being exploitive, and as caricatures. On the other hand, some are seen as wanting to center and re-imagine Cuba through its African roots, Afro-religious forms, and Afro-Cuban cultures. 

The exhibition Afrocubanismo: Highlights from the Ramón and Nercys Cernuda Collection features 27 artworks by 14 Cuban artists. Drawing on the Ramón and Nercys Cernuda Collection, the Lowe Art Museum’s exhibition — guest curated by Alejandro de la Fuente — presents key Afrocubanista works to illuminate the complex social and cultural forces shaping twentieth century Cuban art.

Some of the well-known artists include: Wifredo Lam, Agustin Cardenas, Juan Roberto Diago, Maria Magdalena Campos Pons and Manuel Mendive, among others. Some of the artists who were previously obscured include: Pastor Argudin, Maria Ariza, Antonio Argudin Chon, and Tony Ximenez, among others.” – Lowe Art Museum 

Images courtesy The Lowe Art Museum.