My Own Past

Afrodescendant Contributions to Cuban Art
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-1-009-58646-7
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 370 Seiten

Reihe: Afro-Latin America

In late eighteenth-century Havana, residents frequently referred to the existence of large communities of negros and pardos as 'officers in the trade of painter' and the authors of 'exquisite works.' But who are these artists, and where can we find their works? What sort of works did they produce? Where were they trained, and how did they master their crafts with such perfection? By centering the artistic production and social worlds of artists of African descent in Cuba since the colonial period, this revisionist history of Cuban art provides compelling answers to these questions. Carefully researched and cogently argued, the book explores the gendered racial biases that have informed the constitution of the Cuban art canon; exposes how the ideologues of the slave owning planter class institutionalized the association between 'fine arts' and key attributes of whiteness; and examines how this association continues to shape art historical narratives in Cuba.

Autoren/Hrsg.

De La Fuente, Alejandro

García Yero, Cary Aileen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface; Part I. Artists of African Descent and Cuban Art through the 1930s: 1. Their primorosas obras? Art and Whiteness in colonial Cuba; 2. Afrodescendant artists and citizenship: the twentieth century; 3. Conclusion to Part I; Part II. The Art of Afro-Cubans since the 1930s: Statements on the Social Condition and Cultural Heritage: 4. Reimagining Afrodescendant art from the Vanguardia and the Academy; 5. Against anti-Black racism; 6. Conclusion to Part II; Epilogue: the Afro-Latin American context; Afro-Cuban artists directory; Index.

Über Autor(innen)

De La Fuente, Alejandro
Alejandro de la Fuente is the Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics, Professor of African and African American Studies, and Director of the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at Harvard University. He is the author of four books, and his work on slavery, inequality, Afrodescendant mobilization, and art, have been published in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and German.

García Yero, Cary Aileen
Cary Aileen García Yero is a scholar associate at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. Her writings on race, nation, and the arts appear in the Latin American Research Review and Studies in Latin America Popular Culture, among other publications. Her work has been recognized by the Latin American Studies Association, Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.