TOCA LA SOPA: UMBRALES INFINITOS
Experience the vibrant fusion of Cuban and Chinese cultures at Toca La Sopa: Umbrales Infinitos, an exhibition and event series that celebrates the rich artistic heritage of Chinatown here and abroad. Participating artists draw from diverse influences to create something new and transcendent, recalling the Chino Latino art movement that originated in mid-20th century Havana through Chinese immigration. This syncretic phenomenon incorporated elements of both Chinese and Cuban culture, exploring themes of identity, ritual exchange, and the immigrant experience.
The artists involved in this movement created outside the aesthetic trends of communist Cuban art, which centered national identity as a main referent and persecuted alternative representations not in line with the government’s ideology. Departing culturalist and identitarian frameworks, artists were given to avant-garde tendencies, such as blending Afro-Cuban and Chinese elements. Vanguard artists who centered these traditions in their work include:
Wifredo Lam (1902-1982): A Cuban painter of mixed Chinese and Afro-Cuban heritage, Lam blended elements of surrealism with Afro-Cuban and Chinese symbolism. His work is characterized by its use of bold colors, intricate patterns, and mythic figures.
Amelia Peláez (1896-1968): A Cuban painter known for her colorful works, Peláez incorporated elements of Chinese aesthetics in her paintings with geometric shapes and African motifs.
Hugo Consuegra (1900-1995): A Cuban painter, sculptor, and designer, Consuegra was influenced by Chinese calligraphy and brushwork. He often painted abstract forms that aligned with the spirit of constructing a new society.
Interdiasporic art from this period preserved authentic ways of communing with neighbors and a divine order in everyday life, while defying the demands of an oppressive regime that continues to censor and imprison artists today.
Groundbreaking scholar Martin Tsang studies the cross-fertilization of Chinese and African diasporas in Cuba. He states, “The study of Chinese influences on life and religion in Cuba has the potential to shed new light on the complex and ever-evolving nature of culture" (Tsang, 2018, p. 209). His approach conveys the importance of thinking critically about social systems to resist the binding effects of oppression in all its forms.
The Chino Latino movement stands as a consequential chapter in art history that deserves greater recognition. By delving into its impact on subsequent generations of artists and its position in the broader art historical narrative, we can deepen our understanding of diversity as a revolutionary process rather than a static outcome.
Eclectic artistic styles emerging in past and present Chinatowns demonstrate the evolution and adaptation of expressions in response to social pressures. Within this geographic tissue, Lower Manhattan's Chinatown is a distinctive zone of radical experimentation, where the intermingling of cultures has given rise to a mystical and transgressive art scene. Here, contemporary artists are embracing symbol, practice, and meaning in the context of gentrification–another monolithic force that seeks conformity at the expense of the creative class and generational residents.
Our project acknowledges the influence of interconnected migrations on culture-bearing through the arts, rejects the fear of appropriation, and challenges the notion of gatekeeping identity to engage with these fluid and ongoing processes in our own community. Join us in carrying forward this legacy of cultural translation and share the boundless creativity of artists in Chinatown.
Umbrales Infinitos (Infinite Thresholds), the first installment of Toca La Sopa, features textiles and photographs of Pablo A. Medina, as well as a music performance by Melvis Santa, traditional dance by Isabel Estrada-Jamison & friends, and a screening of Havana Divas by S. Louisa Wei. Check out our event schedule from May 25-June 10, 2023.
Pablo conceived the banners in this exhibition to represent each of the seven primary deities of the West African polytheistic religion Òrìṣà-Ifá, sometimes known in the Americas as Santería. The Orishas, as the deities are called, with their songs, dances, and mythology, represent various forms of morality and beauty, often symbolizing the earth's natural wonders. Although the artist imagined each banner as a contemporary expression, they also contain tradition, folklore, and almost 2,000 years of history, which began in West Africa and later, by way of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, expanded to Cuba.
Afro-Caribbean religions are often thought to be an exclusive syncretism of the Orishas and Catholic saints, but this is an oversimplification. According to Tsang, "The influence of Chinese people in Cuba also had a significant impact on Afro-Cuban beliefs, incorporating Chinese deities, philosophies, and material culture" (ibid., p. 209). This hybridization helps us to understand how different diasporas can coalesce and unbind identity from region by taking into account past and modern migrations of people and exploring the dynamics of heterogeneity apart from the disempowering lens of colonial forces (ibid., p. 209). Likewise, as a Cuban-Colombian artist born and raised in the US, creating this work was as much a process of discovering Pablo's heritage as a point of reference to his spiritual practice.
Pablo's work investigates the vernacular of found letterforms and sign painting from Latin-American neighborhoods in New York City and around the world. Re-contextualizing this visual language from urban landscapes serves as a way of reclaiming his eclectic Latino identity. It becomes a departure point for research on cultural and spiritual themes, including Yoruban, Indigenous, and Buddhist forms of devotion. Most of Pablo's work is painted on either wood, canvas, or paper. However, a fabric flag made for the historic Wide Awakes procession in 2020 is a new medium of exploration that has led to his most recent series of fabric banners, each celebrating a different Yoruban Orisha. By combining traditional concepts with materials and craft, the flags become thresholds that deliver us from the finite into the infinite.
Pablo would like to thank Jackie Rivera for the exquisite seamstress work and Arístides Falcón-Paradí for the insights into the Yoruban culture and practice.
Pablo A. Medina is a Cuban-Colombian artist whose work combines folkloric letterforms with spiritual and ancestral themes. In 2018, the Latin America Contemporary Fine Art Competition (Chelsea, NY) awarded him an exhibition space in Miami's Spectrum Art Fair during Art Basel. In 1999, He was the youngest exhibitor in the Design Triennial exhibition at the Smithsonian's Cooper Hewitt Museum. He has been a contributing artist for a series of fundraising exhibitions that have collectively raised over $15,000 for non-profit organizations, including ACLU, The Standing Rock Council, Make the Road NY and City Harvest. On October 3, 2020, he marched with hundreds of other artist-activists in the historic Wide Awakes procession, protesting police violence, encouraging voting, and manifesting Black joy. He taught art and design at Parsons School of Design, Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), and California College of the Arts (CCA). He paints in his studio in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where New York's largest Chinatown and Latin American communities converge.
References:
Tsang, M. (2018). Religious Mixing as Interdiasporic Cross-Fertilization. In Title of Book or Article (pp. 209-222). London: Routledge.
This project is made possible, in part, with funds from Creative Engagement, a regrant program supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and administered by LMCC.