Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is an artist as well as a human rights activist, which is also referred to as an artivist. He is also a practitioner of strategic nonviolence, as evidenced by the San Isidro protests in November 2020. He is currently serving an unjust five year prison sentence in Cuba after being arrested for leaving his home to join nonviolent protesters in the July 2021 protests. Amnesty International produced the short video below that has footage from that day.
Luis Manuel is now demonstrating the power of nonviolent action from his prison cell, and speaking truth to power.
The Cuban dictatorship through the Wifredo Lam Center of Contemporary Art is inviting artists and curators to the Havana Biennial, which will take place from November 15, 2024 to February 20, 2025. Some will protest this designation, but the Wifredo Lam Center of Contemporary Art was founded in 1984 by the Directorate of the Ministry of Arts and Culture at the request of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. These Havana Biennials have been used over four decades to normalize a totalitarian dictatorship to international audiences since 1984.
However, artists have managed on more than one occasion to challenge the Orwellian status quo by exerting what the late Czech dissident and playwright Vaclav Havel called the “power of the powerless” turning it into an opportunity to break through regime propaganda.
From his prison cell in Guanajay, a maximum-security penitentiary southwest of Havana, Luis Manuel is inviting ” artists and curators attending the forthcoming Havana Biennial (15 November-28 February) to visit him in prison as part of a special art project.”
Luis Manuel in a phone call from prison makes a call to action: “To the artists, theorists, collectors and art lovers who will visit the 2024 biennial, I invite you to see my work and become part of it. It’s called Proof of Life. One special person will be chosen to visit me in prison and spend one or two hours with me in conversation about art and other things. The biennial began as an opportunity for artists from the periphery, and those that have been displaced. Since I can’t go to the event, why not bring [the biennial] to the artist?”
There is another way to show your solidarity with Luis Manuel, and that would be to attend the Rafto Conference this Saturday, November 9, 11:00–14:00 in Bergen, Norway where the Rafto Foundation will spotlight human rights challenges through the case of 2024 Prize winner Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara.” Register for free here: form.typeform.com/to/xAdjlUM1 . You can also join them online: fb.me/e/4cWUIzrIv.
It is also important to remember that, in addition to Luis Manuel, Cuba currently has over 1,100 documented political prisoners.
Rafto Foundation, November 5, 2024
https://x.com/RaftoFoundation/status/1853811563695644824The Art Newspaper, November 4, 2024
Artist jailed in Cuba invites biennial visitors to ‘become part’ of his work in prison
Activist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara plans to spend time with a fan of his work at a maximum-security penitentiary during Havana Biennial
The Cuban artist and activist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who is being held in jail in Cuba, has invited artists and curators attending the forthcoming Havana Biennial (15 November-28 February) to visit him in prison as part of a special art project. Otero Alcántara, who has been imprisoned since 2021, is currently detained in Guanajay, a maximum-security penitentiary southwest of Havana.
He says in a phone call
from prison: “To the artists, theorists, collectors and art lovers who will visit the 2024 biennial, I invite you to see my work and become part of it. It’s called Proof of Life. One special person will be chosen to visit me in prison and spend one or two hours with me in conversation about art and other things.
“The biennial began as an opportunity for artists from the periphery, and those that have been displaced. Since I can’t go to the event, why not bring [the biennial] to the artist?”
According to Coco Fusco, a Cuban-US artist who is campaigning for Otero Alcántara’s release, he decided to participate in the event because of “the hypocrisy of the government in presenting a biennial in a climate of repression and censorship”.
Otero Alcántara was detained on 11 July 2021 on charges of contempt and insult to national symbols, after posting a video to social media saying he planned to join the anti-government protests which swept the country that day. The co-founder of the San Isidro freedom movement, Otero Alcántara has gone on hunger strike several times during his incarceration. The Cuban Embassy in London was contacted for comment.
The theme of the 15th Havana Biennial, which is organised by the Wifredo Lam Contemporary Arts Centre in Havana, is “shared horizons”. Individuals interested in taking part in Otero Alcántara’s project should contact the Cuban Ministry of the Interior, which was contacted for comment.