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Crossing My Security
  

  Solo Show
Lisbet Fernandez

Issue #42 Nov - Jan 2002
Cuba, La Habana

Erena Hernandez


Many observers agree that Lisbet Fernández’s pieces are “weird.” They are also labeled disquieting, even enigmatic... The truth is that, for one reason or another, they attract and hold the observer with a “hook” that emanates either from their scale, their facial expression, or the way they are posed. These are polychromatic terracotta sculptures of children (sometimes intentionally genderless), in reality an excuse for metaphors related to complex themes of human existence. It bears noting that Cuban art of the 1980’s tended to focus more on critical social commentaries, whereas in the 90’s the gaze is fundamentally directed towards the individual.
Cruzando mi seguridad (Crossing my Security) is the title chosen by Fernández for her latest exhibition. Here the artist carries forward the meditations inaugurated in her previous show, which was her graduation thesis from the Instituto Superior de Arte in 1998. The work, however, has gained in synthetic capacity, resulting in a more effective communication of its message.
It was interesting to listen to the public’s comments, especially from people who passed by the space and came in out of curiosity, or from those who asked if the pieces were ornaments and decorations for some sort of childcare center. It was certainly strange to encounter four babies crawling in the direction of a wall while another one, defying gravity, crawled up —the artist’s commentary on the realization of the impossible.
That was, if you will, the show’s leitmotiv: a call for the observer to jump forward, to abandon the “security” provided by the many protective shields behind which we seek refuge, either because we fear failure or because we are constrained by the chains that prevent us from breaking barriers, preconceptions, reservations. The artist looks at society by pausing to look at the individual. This is a new strategy in Cuban art. Fernández appeals to personal initiative, the individual’s capacity to alter and enrich the environment, free of fears and constraints.
This is why she chooses to represent children. According to Fernández, she is interested in the spontaneity of childhood, in the child’s capacity for constant change. She questions adult’s fears of losing security, since she believes that “all forms of security are nothing else than mere illusions, illusions that condition us and tie us down.” For this 27 year-old woman, the important thing is “to feel oneself completely uncontaminated, alone (...),” ready for “permanent change and growth, for the preservation of a sense of the new, a sense of the unknown.”
It’d be a mistake to look at Fernández’s work with an expectation of psychoanalytical references, a sort of Freudian development through which she’d be “curing” herself of some childhood trauma. There is nothing of that. Her childhood was a happy one and she is not interested in mining her own history. That’s why she has avoided presenting any objects that could be distracting, such as baby bottles, wooden playpens, clothing, and the like. She focuses on the figure of the child as a concrete expressive element, and she even goes beyond, concentrating on specific facial expressions and gestures.
The artist charges her pieces with specific meaning not only by giving children central roles, but also by choosing terracotta as her material; both elements refer to origins and to malleability, to what’s fertile and natural. At the same time, her ideas and images only acquire their full dimension in the specific space in which they are to be deployed; it is the space what ultimately qualifies the work.
Sculpture, like engraving, has not had the same explosive development in Cuba as other media, but Fernández is not interested in laying the groundwork for programmatic actions and new paradigms. Simply, she comes from the Camagüey province, home to a rich pottery and ceramic tradition, and to mold the earth was for her an almost natural choice when she first began to develop as an artist; these materials turned out to be ideal for what she wanted to communicate. Having said this, let’s add that her work in terracotta really is unusual. In my opinion, one of Fernández more significant achievements —after so many years of collectivism and state paternalism— is her focus on the individual and her message that “as long as you are capable of transforming yourself, you are also capable of changing your surroundings. Don’t accept routines.” This is a call to transcend the quietism that so hinders our society.
 


 

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