Making A Way Out Of No Way
What Contemporary Cuban Photography Taught Me About My Father, Survival, and the Art of Ingenuity
Dear Reader,
I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the Museum of Fine Arts-Houston.
What is there not to love? Art and inspiration around every corner. There have been times that I have purposefully gotten lost at the MFAH. It’s just a great way to spend the afternoon.
So when they called with an opportunity to create a new poem based on a new exhibit called Navigating the Waves: Contemporary Cuban Photography, there was only one answer.
I think the coolest part of being a writer is having experiences that you may not have on average. I didn’t know what to expect when I came to the exhibit. Contemporary Cuban photography could mean so many things. My family on my father’s side is Cuban. I am a proud daughter of an exile. I’ve written about Cuba so many times but with so many of my family no longer alive, I have felt a disconnection to my father’s homeland and my cultural anchor.
The gallery of where the exhibit is. Museum of Fine Arts Houston.
That’s what I saw in the photographs. And that’s what I saw in my father.
The theme of identity was also in the show. Cuban’s past has colored who other people identify what is considered “Cuban”. This identity is reduced to symbols, artifacts that make it easier to label: classic cars still functioning, often times with used bubble gum and an old shoe string, cigars, run, Castro, Communism, Scarface, and how we voted in the last election. These images and artifacts are not always self-selected, they are projected on to us by politics, history and exile. The lived experiences of Cuban people comes second. We are not defined by nostalgia or ideology. We are defined by ingenuity and survival. We have always made a way when there wasn’t a way.
That’s what I saw in the photographs. And that’s what I saw in my father growing up.
I didn’t know how he would do it but he made sure my education was paid for, that I had a way to get to and from the University of Houston, that the books I needed would be taken care of, that I would still have a roof over my head, food in my belly, and clothes on my back. All of this even though I knew and could see that we weren’t quite financially solid as he and mom would have liked. I am so grateful to him and my mother for my education, the value of which allows me to be a college professor and take care of my family and write this missive every week or so.
That ingenuity is exactly present in the photographs. For some photographers in this exhibit, they shot in film. They were ingenious with how to make developer for their shots.
La Habana, Cuba, 1987, printed 1992 by Humberto Mayol
Untitled, 2009 by Raúl Cañibano
Imagine not being able to order what you need or even go to a store to buy what you need. To make a print from film on an island with limited access to chemicals is nothing short of alchemy. Here’s what they had to do: unspool the film in the dark, shielding it from light, then develop it with solutions they had to invent. There was no buying anything — not even food sometimes.
This is Cuban ingenuity, this is making a way out of no way. This what being Cuban, specifically Cuban creativity, is really about.
And this is just one of the ideas I have that I may write about for the event on August 1. I am excited, of course, but also a bit nervous. I want the right words, the right combination, the right mental images to go with this exhibit. But I know I will find them, and in a way I already have. I have them with me always. This is what these artists have shown me through their photographs and so I will answer in kind.
As always,
—Icess