Call it auspicious timing. Right as the United States and Cuba enter a historic new phase of normalized relations, Wichita State's Royce Smith (above at left), associate professor of contemporary and global art history and director of the School of Art, Design and Creative Industries, has struck up an innovative collaboration with Cuban researcher, curator and art critic Dannys Montes de Oca Moreda (above at right), of the Lam Centre of Contemporary Art in Havana.
The two are co-curating Entre, Dentro, Fuera/ Between, Inside, Outside, a group exhibition to be up at the 12th Havana Biennial, May 22-June 22 in Havana. The exhibition, they explain in a curatorial statement, examines the artistic relationships between Cuba and the United States:
“Art serves as a unique borderland and fertile meeting ground — creating and disseminating knowledge through new interactivities, and illustrating the ways in which feelings and desires inform individual works.”
Two other School of Art, Design and Creative Industries faculty members are involved in the group exhibition. Levente Sulyok, associate professor of painting and drawing, presents his installation Re-Distribution of the Sensible, a project that explores aspects of French philosopher Jacques Rancière's definition of the “distribution of the sensible.” And Elizabeth Stevenson, adjunct lecturer of art and architecture and Fisch Haus Gallery director and co-founder, completes her multi-site project Eat/Sleep/Work: The House, Deconstructed.
Established in 1984, the Havana Biennial is organized on the basis of a research and curatorial process — on a theme of reflection. This year it is “Between the Idea and the Experience.”
