We chatted online, of course, with a 27-year-old man whose life is spent with his keystrokes and surfing on the net. He is an addict to graphic design, to technology, to detect and absorb whatever is published on the internet about his passion: digital art.
But that was not what attracted me about Victor Alejandro Morales Oliú. What caused this interview was the subject of his latest project: Dilemmas, a work that penetrates the subsurface of self-employment in Cuba and explores the behavior of those who practice this type of trade that the State has often marginalized. On Victor’s art, this time, the self-employed’s human identity becomes a commodity.
Four years at the Vincentina de la Torre Academy of Arts, of Camagüey, two as a teacher in a similar school in Ciego de Avila, and a five-year study of the career of Information Design at the Institute of Design in Havana, support his skill and good technique.
So the jury considered the latest edition of Digital Arts Project, sponsored by the Pablo de la Torriente Brau Cultural Centrer where he, precisely with Dilemma, won the only prize awarded.
It was described as imaginative and daring, to address a “complex and sensitive issues of our current reality, that of self-employment, proposing appealing humor and keen and thoughtful insight about it.”
Today, when the self-employment in Cuba is like wildfire in the country’s life, these were the words of Victor to Oncuba…
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What is Dilemmas, exactly?
It is the spatial installation of 20 individual portraits accompanied by words that describe a given situation of self-employed. Each face is built with products taken (photographed) of their offerings; it also shows the word Revolution divided into letters and three audiovisual.
Why did you choose exactly this topic?
Because the increasing transformation of the urban landscape of the country imposed it on me. It was inevitable that I was affected by the scope of self-employment directly in day to day reality and I felt the need, as artistic mission, to develop a project to interpret this situation.
Perseverance and commitment of man as a transformer of his environment through a personal alternative, failures and achievements infused to prevail and endure in the environment he lives in, it’s always inspiring.
Out of curiosity, is someone in your family self-employed?
Not so far.
What criteria did you use in selecting people to take photos of? Did you pick them at random?
No. I based my choices in the variety of ways to exercise self-employment, and the more subjective, on the reliability and availability of the traders to be interviewed and photographed, for there was much skepticism with my project and it was inevitable to confront various characters and personal assimilation.
What did you ask them?
What they sell, why that is and nothing else, what led them to these circumstances, frustrations, prospects, future plans…
What were you looking for with these questions?
See beyond the difference between the selling and buying, interact humanely with the inner world of these workers with much or little to say but just need to express themselves and be accepted as a phenomenon and be socially integrated into our culture.
What commonalities in the speech of all you detected?
The need for financial solvency above all and the freedom to integrate to society from a very individualistic perspective
Did people offer resistance when you approach them?
I experienced everything from total rejection to the novelty of my work to a wide acceptance and identification with the project’s scope.
Tell me a story
My first and unsuccessful attempt to “break the ice” when I started walking the streets was with an older gentleman who neither let me explain the meaning of my artistic action. He sold razors, batteries … and never gave me the interview, but I persevered with others and got this result.
How much time you needed to complete the project?
After nearly three months of intense searching, conduct and close link with the urban environment of Havana, but the most critical moment was that interaction with the seller, required to obtain first-hand all images of the various product that are offered today in any facility.
How did you feel when you saw your work finally finished?
I felt confident in myself and the satisfaction of having completed another art project again.
And you won…
Yes. The award was the exhibition of Dilemmas in the Pablo Center, and money used to purchase accessories and inputs in the shops of Havana to help me develop my creative work.
Had you previously participated in other events of this type?
I had been for four years participating in Digital Art Salons promoted by the Pablo Center and always my works were selected by the jury to be part of the exhibition with the winners.
How do you see the development of digital art in Cuba today?
Exponential and very contextual. Apart from the use of new technologies, digital art is understood as a manifestation that does not depend on the media to express themselves, but also incorporate tools such as process rather than final product.
But digital art must be understood as the efficient and conceptual means not to interfere with the message, meaning through artistic result and not through what a tool is capable of generating by itself. Everything is relative around this cultural event.
Do you think it needs more spaces that encourage it and link it to people?
Yes, especially a digital art exhibition is not seen only as “print or project” but go to the installation-and the emergence of new areas of promotion, something that the Center has assumed well.
How is digital art important for this always changing and dynamic Cuban society?
I think it is now is the way to make art more viable to society as long as the technology does not overshadow the outcome of speech and artistic creation. The intellect does not require chips or codes, it is simply supported in languages, such as digital, created by man to show his feelings and ways of life in order to bring the reality, looking at it differently.
