Identidades in English No 4, December 2014 | Page 82

Fig. 5a. Pablo Toscano
1974. “En mi Paisaje”.
[In My Landscape]
Painting. Oil on canvas

Fig. 5b. Miguel de J. Ocejo 1978. Fig. 5c. Arnaldo Rodríguez La“Ancestrálica of the Fossils”.
rrinaga 1976.
Painting. Oil on canvas
“La Danza de la Semilla”.
[The Dance of the Seed]
Oil on cardboard

As a creative motivation for the members of the
Origen group, this exploration of the universe of
Caribbean plastic arts unlinked itself from the official view towards Eastern Europe, with which
there were only political and formal ties steeped
in protocol.
This distancing allowed the group to manipulate
icons and symbols, and reconstruct syncretic histories with an eclectic and imaginative narrative
that was almost dreamlike. They fused referents
stemming from the Cuban anthropological imaginary and recreated other and new stories, myths
and legends whose artistic value rested in their
tendency towards a distortion of the original elements. As Ocejo himself puts it, it was a sort of
“new way to project the magical realism that Carpentier injected into the kingdom of this world.”
Even though in Cuba, he who doesn’t have some
Congo has some Carabalí, a folklore researcher
was more tolerable that someone labeled as ‘religious,’ retrograde, anti-scientific and backward.
Anything that came even close to these labels was
seen as witchcraft: art with roots in African religiosity was getting complicated.

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Conversations and disclaimers at exhibit openings were a must, offering lengthy explanations
and justifications to avoid misunderstanding,
even though most of the people were in attendance for the mojitos and appetizers were offered
at those “black goings on,” despite the fact the art
critics were actually “consulting with each other
deep into the night,” which paraphrased a popular
song.
The “Antillean” group
When the Consejo Nacional de Culture [National
Council on Culture] (CNC) disappeared, and the
Ministry of Culture (MINCULT) was created
(both in 1976), there was an attempt made to deconstruct the Grey Quinquennium’s framework
and all its effects in the realm of ideas: misunderstandings, Stalinism, extremism, and excessive
control in the hands of only a few.
All these were the result of the infamous Primer
Congreso de Educación y Culture [First Congress
on Education and Culture] (1971), which unleashed a crusade against a group of people in the
arts and literature, who were parametrizados