Havana, October 27, 2021

Since the end of 2019, the team of curators of the Bienal de La Habana began to meet with colleagues and artists to get their opinions. These meetings turned into a critical exercise that analysed successes and failures, as well as the need to update the structure of the event and adapt it, even more, to the specificities of our context. Beyond the differences, consensus prevailed on the significance of keeping the appointment alive. A firm idea in the minds and actions of many Cuban creators and intellectuals, as well as foreigners, who have shown their support in different ways, the best of them, responding positively to the invitation to be part of this 14th edition.

We can assure that the decision to hold the Biennial responded not only to the wishes of many Cuban artists and specialists in the visual arts, but also to the imperative to stabilize, as far as possible, its biannual periodicity and also to correspond to the universalist vocation and open culture that has characterized Cuba for decades.

Our team is no stranger to the events that have marked the last two years, in the world. This Biennial has been conceived and planned, in its structure and concepts, taking into account that reality. We have set out to work from the austerity demanded by the present moment, considering sustainability as the guiding axis, hence the agreement to extend the period of the exhibitions, minimise the international transport of works and select environmentally friendly and resourceefficient projects, most of the times using resources contributed mostly by the artists themselves. Likewise, the production of the exhibitions is based on the principle of reuse of furniture, equipment and spaces that we already had, and collaboration with our own and foreign institutions willing to promote art and culture.

Since its creation, the Bienal de La Habana has fostered the plural development of visual expressions and facilitated the horizontal concurrence of artists and thinkers from countries and groups often located outside the centres of power. Fulfilling this task, has made known internationally countless creators of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean, with very diverse aesthetic and ideological positions. In addition, it has greatly promoted the development of Cuban art, encouraging exchanges between foreign and national artists, and, in many cases, cementing and strengthening the careers of the latter. We believe that it is our mission to defend that legacy and, with it, the very existence of this anti-hegemonic space, which privileges dialogue and freedom, and, above all, the right of art to exist and to be shared, recognizing its transformative value and its power to move humanity towards a more promising and inclusive future.

At the same time, the Bienal de La Habana has contributed to a rapprochement of the imaginaries of art, the traditional and the renovator, with popular sectors not specialized in this field, supporting forms of interaction between numerous and very diverse receivers and the multiple contemporary of art.

Those who today call for a boycott are largely based on arguments that transcend the functions, competencies and objectives of an artistic space. They thus deny any possibility of acting from the field of art and tarnish the legitimate desire of those who choose this moment to socialize their works and debate ideas.

Those of us who took up the call for the 14th Bienal de La Habana want for our country, and for the whole world, a more prosperous and inclusive future. We trust in the ability of art and artists to generate areas of harmony and understanding, opposed to any exercise of violence. Its realization is our modest effort to achieve that goal, and that is why we say Yes to the Bienal de La Habana.

Always against all kinds of colonial attitude, violence and injustice in any part of the world, our Biennial bet to continue being a point of coincidence for the horizontal dialogue and the unprejudiced exchange between creators, curators, cultural executives and intermediaries of the circulation of art from all latitudes. To deny the possibility of materializing it means taking an anti-cultural and exclusionary position; to ask artists to refrain from showing their proposals and thought professionals not to issue their criteria, is to censor and attack anyone who wishes, by choice, attend this appointment. To assume this position of coercion and limitation not only for Cubans, but also for personalities of other nationalities, would be to opt for de facto complicity with the imperial powers that try to silence the voices raised from the South.

Today they try to boycott the Bienal de La Habana, tomorrow they will do it against any event or festival, because what they try to destroy is not the celebration of a meeting of contemporary art, but the possibility that life develops in a normal way in our country.

From here we call to respect and support the efforts of all artists and cultural workers from all parts of the world who have invested their energies to make this confluence possible. We thank all the solidarity voices that have risen up to defend the Bienal de La Habana.

14th BIENAL DE LA HABANA

Future and Contemporaneity November 12, 2021 – April 30, 2022.

CONTACT: Email: divulgacion@wlam.cult.cu / comunicacionwifredolam@gmail.com

Website: www.wlam.cult.cu/14bienaldelahabana.html

Social network: @bienaldelahabana / @habanabienal / @CACWifredoLam / @cac_wifredo_lam / @centrodeartecontemporaneowifredolam