Ladies who meet in the universe of the National Museum of Decorative Arts, women who coincide in a space of harmonious communication, make up the exhibition La nasobuqueña tropical by the renowned Cuban visual artist Flora Fong, opened as part of the 14th Havana Biennial. 

A call for the protection of nature and planet Earth, a distinction to the Cuban and universal woman who has dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Camagüey-born artist proposes in her new personal exhibition of 13 medium and large canvases, using mixed techniques that combine acrylic, oil, and pastel. 

In the gallery and the dining room of the emblematic Havana institution, a spatial connection and dialogue are achieved with pieces from the 18th-century oriental crockery La dama del parasol, of great patrimonial value and part of the collection of this highly specialized museum, a world leader in foreign decorative arts. 

"For me, it is important to leave a testimonial of the indispensable face masks", Flora Fong said at a press conference before the inauguration, "when I saw the crockery and that plate, it inspired me a lot and I thought that the ladies should wear the face masks. I had to interpret the crockery designed by the Dutch painter Conerlis Pronk.

"So I came up with a journey through time, a Chinese script on one side, the sun, the movement of the grayish blues, the two ladies with face masks, and I replaced the parasol with one of my parasols from the Artex Arte en Casa collection, which has an emblematic sunflower printed on it. It's an opportunity to interact artistically, I'm proud." 

We can enjoy in the present series, which will be exhibited until 19 March 2022, the aesthetic values and poetics that identify Flora Fong's work, there are those elements such as the palm in the wind, the little hen, the Cuban flag, and the Chinese characters. 

 The tropical nasobuqueña 

The paths of art connect even in times of pandemic for the enjoyment of beauty, and this is exactly what has happened with this exhibition by Flora Fong, who has an international artistic itinerary that legitimizes her. 

"It is a transgressive exhibition, for the first time the MNAD is proposing a painting exhibition, there are no records in the mediate past that show this", commented Teresa Toranzo Castillo, curator of Asian Art at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. 

For the specialist, the fact that the work is in dialogue with the MNAD collection offers a new symbolic value to the transgression, intervening the piece directly from a discursive point of view, the content of the crockery, and its meaning. 

"Her speech is visionary, she is sending a warning message to women all over the world in times of pandemic, and pays tribute to all of them who have had to reinvent themselves as workers, mothers, wives, housewives, neighbors, in all spheres of society, all areas of the feminine universe in this particular period. There are a lot of symbolic values and beauty in these masks that one feels they escape to look for a new mode of expression," she said. 

Flora's nasobuqueñas were created between 2020 and 2021. The author named them: Cuando el sol es luz de vida, La cubana, La enfermera y también la paciente, En tiempos de pandemia, La guajira, Custodiada, Crepuscular, La mariposa de Baracoa, Una tarde tras otra, Liang frente a la Covid, La gallinita azul, Enfrentando la Covid and La dama del parasol. 

Another significant aspect pointed out by the expert is the artist's return to figuration, from when she painted her children in the 1970s. And she pointed out details of her artistic evolution, working on landscape, the representation and meaning of Chinese ideograms after long and in-depth studies. His research over two decades on the behavior of nature and its phenomena, mainly in the Caribbean, and in particular, tropical cyclones, his transit through tropical fruits, coffee, tobacco, as well as sculpture. 

Essential alliances 

Flora Fong's Las nasobuqueñas tropicales has brought to light the alliances necessary to carry out projects of this magnitude, from the National Council of Cultural Heritage of the Ministry of Culture, which renovated several spaces of the MNAD and with the restoration of walls, paintings in situ, lighting, museum modifications, architectural pre-existence of the spaces, among them the gallery where most of the exhibition is now on display. 

Yosvanis Fornaris Garcell, the curator of Asian Art and director of the MNAD, describes the donation of one of the pieces in the exhibition, the interpretation of The Lady with the Parasol, as of exceptional value. 

"This is the first time that we have had a work by a prominent Cuban visual artist, which is closely interchangeable with the museum's heritage. The physical dialogue between the dining room and the gallery, the communication that is opening up for the first time in the MNAD, has been a success," said the director. 

 Among the added values of the exhibition is the marriage of artistic manifestations, as it is an example of the possibility of welcoming the enormous talent that has developed in Cuba's art schools, in the galleries of the museums, whether municipal or provincial.