{"id":243662,"date":"2021-09-14T15:19:34","date_gmt":"2021-09-14T19:19:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=243662"},"modified":"2021-09-14T15:30:25","modified_gmt":"2021-09-14T19:30:25","slug":"jacqueline-maggi-i-learned-to-do-with-my-hands-what-i-could-with-what-i-had-and-where-life-would-take-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/opinion\/columns\/jacqueline-maggi-i-learned-to-do-with-my-hands-what-i-could-with-what-i-had-and-where-life-would-take-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacqueline Maggi: \u201cI learned to do with my hands what I could, with what I had and where life would take me\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

She comes from a Santiago de Cuba family keenly interested in art and the humanities. Her father, Horacio Maggi, was a painter, furniture and interior designer, cartoonist, teacher at the San Alejandro Art School and at the National School of Design.<\/span><\/p>\n

On her mother\u2019s side, Rosal\u00eda Holland, there are many musicians and professors in different specialties.<\/span><\/p>\n

She is the niece of renowned teacher Beatriz Maggi and cousin of designer Maggie Holland. Just to give some details.<\/span><\/p>\n

Horacio, her father, studied Mining Engineering in the United States. When World War II began, he enlisted, along with his classmates, in the U.S. Army. He spent the war in Europe, in a unit of sappers. During a leave, he traveled to Santiago de Cuba, and there he was surprised by the end of the war and love, as he met Rosal\u00eda, who would be the mother of his six children.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Horacio Maggi\u2019s studio in Havana. In the background, Jacqueline.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The couple settled in New York, because Horacio thought it was the ideal city to start his career as an artist. Jacqueline was also born in the Big Apple. She is an artist notable for her versatility and for the balance that her works present, between the density of the concept and the visual packaging.<\/span><\/p>\n

We talked with her.<\/span><\/p>\n

When did you travel to Havana for the first time?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Although I was born in New York in 1948, Cuba is mine, as it is for all Cubans. I don\u2019t remember anything from those New York days, only stories and photos remain. In that apartment in Chelsea, my father, my mother and I lived with the studio and the art materials with which my father worked as an architectural and interior designer. Something must have impregnated me that would never leave me. From then on home and study have always been together, and wherever I have lived, and to this day, I have not been able to separate them. I was just over two years old when the family decided to return to Havana, so my first memories are those of Havana in the 1950s, always near the sea.<\/span><\/p>\n

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I am Cuban because the place and circumstances of a birth are fortuitous events. Nobody or almost nobody in the Cuban and international artistic community knows that I was born in Chelsea, everyone recognizes me as Cuban, not as a \u201cyuma\u201d (Cuban slang for American).<\/span><\/p>\n

You studied here (in Cuba) and then you were a teacher, you joined the cultural life of the country. How was the learning experience?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

My father was my first teacher: techniques, work and passion. And I spent many of the best moments of my childhood and youth in his studio. When I was growing up, I had dreams of being an architect, interior designer, and children\u2019s book illustrator. I finished high school and went directly to the National School of Design (which preceded Higher Institute of Design) to study the specialty of Graphics. I graduated in 1972 and started working as an illustrator at Pueblo y Educaci\u00f3n publishers. But in 1976 the Higher Institute of Art (ISA) was created, and another phase began. I enrolled in 1977 in the course for workers, in the specialty of Engraving, of which I knew nothing and learned a lot.<\/span><\/p>\n

They were intense years, in which I did juggling: marriage, motherhood; working in the publishing house and running to the ISA, to the Experimental Graphic Workshop, learning again, new colleagues, in the hive that was that inspiring space. Those were the times to integrate myself to the dynamics of plastic arts, to participate in many national and international exhibitions and to win prizes.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Penumbras, 2020. Ebony; 8\u201d x 7\u201d x 7\u201d.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And then another cycle begins. I decided to leave illustration and start teaching at the National School of Art (ENA). It was never my purpose to teach, but teaching has come to occupy a large part of my life, until today. I taught printmaking at the ENA for 10 years, from 1982 to 1992, and I enjoyed it, especially because of the exchanges with those young people who came with great illusions and desires to learn, to discuss ideas and transform the country through art. We tried to do everything in the midst of many shortages.<\/span><\/p>\n

In my classroom, from the door to the inside, the least I taught was engraving, because I myself questioned the limits between the manifestations and the need to go beyond them. We talked about literature, about the subjects that interested the students, about what we saw, about transgressing manifestations…. My first installations are precisely from those years, where I convert the matrices of my engravings into sculptures and three-dimensional spaces. Some critics have said that I was a pioneer in this, I don\u2019t know. I am happy to follow many of my students, such as Alexandre Arrechea, Dagoberto and Fernandito Rodr\u00edguez. I am glad to hear about their lives; I celebrate their successes. I am still by them in many ways.<\/span><\/p>\n

All my life is linked to Cuba, my training, my fellow students, fellow artists, my family, love relationships, and this is what has marked my identity.<\/span><\/p>\n