Hamlet Lavastida exposes the Cuban prison system at the kyiv Biennial

The artist Hamlet To stage He is the only Cuban invited this year to the kyiv Biennial where he exhibits his series Penitentiary Republic.

“The series Penitentiary Republic It started as a series of openworks measuring one meter by 70 centimeters—openwork as an archive of paper matrices that I have continually used—around the year 2021. Around April or May, before going to Cuba, that was when I made the sketches. of this type of works that create that small map about the repression in Cuba and then I fall into prison in Villa Marista,” Lavastida told Cuban newspaper.

The artist will exhibit, in this case, from that series, which is a map of Cuban prisons, an aerial view of the Valle Grande prison.

For Lavastida it is necessary to expose the repressive system of the Cuban regime, one of its best kept secrets.

“I think it is necessary to investigate and expose these black holes that exist due to political and cultural repression in Cuba, because simply by doing so you are educating a foreign public and our public about these gaps,” he says.

“The Cuban prison system is one of the regime's best kept secrets. A work that points out and indicates to a foreign public: this is a prison, this is one of the many prisons that the National Directorate of Jails and Prisons has in Cuba, here people suffer imprisonment, here there are currently political prisoners," he adds. .

The artist values the opportunity to participate in this very special event in the warlike circumstances in Ukraine.

“For me it is very interesting because I am the first Cuban artist invited, I am the only Cuban in this biennial, which is based in Vienna and other cities. We are talking about this transnationality and this circularity of what is today precisely exile, the Ukrainian diaspora in Europe, expanded throughout Europe due to the danger of war, and then it has a headquarters in Brussels, it has other headquarters in Berlin, in Warsaw and in Vienna, which is where I participate, and another headquarters in a city in Ukraine, close to the West,” he comments.

THE kyiv Biennale will start next October and will run until 2024. Against the Logic of War is the name that bears the flag of this fifth edition that will breathe life into the midst of the deadly climate of Russia's war against Ukraine, as reported Regular Magazine.

“Instead of abandoning the project and thus submitting to the logic of war that attacks everything civil, the 2023 Biennial is based on its founding idea: that of being a multicenter initiative in a European environment, interconnected and in a form of solidarity” , announce the organizers.

In November of last year, Lavastida rreceived the Freedom of Expression in the Arts Award, delivered in its twenty-second edition by the organization Index on Censorship (Censorship Index).

The activist, who was imprisoned for several months by State Security, considered this recognition important for independent artists oppressed by the Cuban regime.