Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara will auction the Cuban flag and donate the money to the Government to confront the coronavirus

Cuban independent artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara announced that next Wednesday at 3:00 pm he will auction the national flag used in the Drapeau performance, and the money raised will be donated to the authorities to confront the coronavirus.

“The money will be donated to the Cuban State, in the figure of the President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, to confront the coronavirus pandemic. The auction will be online through my Facebook platform and the money will be delivered to the Central Committee once the auction is over. The flag is signed by the artist,” he detailed on his Facebook wall.

“Drapeau is a performance where the artist uses the Cuban flag as a second skin for twenty-four hours for a month,” the post adds.

For these types of actions, the judicial authorities are trying to prosecute him for the alleged crime of property damage, for which the Prosecutor's Office is asking him for two to five years in prison.

Drapeau's work received harsh criticism from the Cuban regime, particularly from the vice minister of culture Fernando Rojas, who accused him of being a mercenary.

The project was about having the Cuban flag, like your second skin, for a month. The author's intention was to promote a reflection on the weight of the flag, the country and the symbols in our lives, from a contemporary discourse, demystifying the patriot.

“People want to see what they want to see and not what is in the photo, an artist, a young Cuban, patriotic, who questions things, even the symbol.The flag is not a colored cloth object"It's a feeling," he revealed to CiberCuba.

Otero Alcántara usually uses the Cuban flag as part of his artistic work denouncing the regime. Last June he presented a performance that was part of theseries titled “Se USA”, in which the objective was to hold a Cuban flag for 24 hours straight.

In an interview for CiberCuba he then explained thatThis type of expression demystifies a symbol that the regime has appropriated and makes it a symbol of freedom.

“With this work, one of the things that interests me is questioning the concept of homeland, identity, nationalism, which are always tools used by power,” he expressed.

The plastic artist was arrested on March 1 by the political police, when he was heading to a demonstration against the homophobic tendencies of National Television. He remained detained for two weeks in the Valle Grande penitentiary center, in La Lisa, awaiting an abbreviated summary trial for the charge against him.

He was released on March 14, after a pressure campaign by several Cuban artists and intellectuals directed at the regime.

The singers Pedro Luis Ferrer, Carlos Varela, Haydée Milanes, Albita Rodriguez, Yotuel (Orishas), Silvio Rodriguez and Athanai; the San Isidro Movement; journalists Carlos Manuel Alvarez and Monica Baro; opponent Guillermo Fariñas as well as US Undersecretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Michael G. Kozak and Amnesty International had requested clarification of the case and the activist's immediate release.