On the Cover

Somebody asked me recently where Sandra Ramos (b. 1969) lives. The question caught me by surprise, as I could not determine its relevance. I suspect it was a question informed by one of those parochial and fetichizing views of what constitutes Cuban art, a view according to which only the art produced by artists who live and reside in the island is true Cuban art. According to this standard, Wifredo Lam would be French, or perhaps Italian.

Sandra's work is as Cuban as it gets, populated as it is by anthological figures of Cuban popular culture—Liborio, Abela's famous Bobo, and by her own alter ego, a schoolgirl dressed in uniform who witnesses, frequently with helpless astonishment, how Cuba drowns, as she does in her Orilla (Serie Naufragios) (Shore, Shipwrecks Series). In fact, Sandra's schoolgirl has become, if not the voice, then the visual expression of a generation of Cubans, those who were born after the revolution of 1959, grew up under that revolution, and unavoidably experienced its successes, contradictions, and painful shortcomings. Like Sandra's schoolgirl, that generation experienced the return of the mighty dollar and of differentiated and highly unequal consumption. Like Sandra's schoolgirl, that generation also connected with previous generations of Cubans through shared disenchantment, displacement, and experiences of state repression. Sandra developed a personal, peculiar, and singular language to process the enormous tensions that Cuban society experienced during those years, to the point that it is impossible to write about Cuban art since the 1990s without discussing her work. She has posed probing questions through an exquisite combination of irony, humor, and a deep engagement with Cuban republican history, the history that her generation did not get to learn in Cuban schools. Nobody has captured the contradictions experienced by Cuban society since the so-called Special Period better than Sandra Ramos.

For a change, this is a great artist whose work has been rightfully recognized by collectors, museums, critics, and galleries. Her works are found in some of the most prestigious art collections of Cuba and the world, including the National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana; the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City; the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), Boston; and countless other museums and private collections around the world. No serious collection of Cuban contemporary art can do without her work.

Where does she live? In Cuba, of course, because Cuba has never been the delimited island imagined by government officials and a few dull collectors.

On the cover: Sandra Ramos, Orilla (Serie Naufragios), 2004, digital print, edition of 20, 15.75″ × 23.6″