Curator Looking / MAURIZZIO HECTOR PINEDA

SUR:biennial / PST:LA/LA

The Cuban Matrix is TAM’s contribution to the 2017 SUR: biennial. SUR is a biennial multi-venue, international exhibition program. Participating institutions produce projects with artists from across Latin America, as well as Latin American artists working in and engaging Southern California. 2017’s iteration is SUR’s fourth and Torrance Art Museum’s third participation.

The Cuban Matrix is also a part of Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far-reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, taking place from September 2017 through January 2018 at more than 70 cultural institutions across Southern California. Pacific Standard TIme is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.

This exhibition is organized by Maurizzio Hector Pineda with the assistance of Benjamin W. Tippin, and supporting museum staff and management guidance, with the kind support of the City of Torrance through their cultural programming and Torrance Art Museum Advocates (TAMA).

Participating artists include: Ariamna Contino, Alejandro Figueredo Diaz-Perera, Jorge Otero Escobar, Diana Fonseca, Alexander Hernandez, Tony Labat with Juan Carlos Alom, Francisco Maso, Reynier Leyva Novo and Esterio Segura.

The Cuban Matrix features contemporary Cuban artwork, with emphasis on digital media exchange culture. The focus of the exhibition is the offline digital “mercado” (marketplace) sharing culture that has arisen around the phenomenon of “El Paquete Semanal”: a weekly terabyte packet of entertainment, downloaded webpages and information that is carried into Cuba, shared and consumed throughout Cuban society.

The works that TAM will be hosting exist and were created in conditions tempered by limited access to the virtual information systems that most of the developed world takes for granted. The artists and their works are shaped by these limitations and the cultural responses that grew to meet them. While the high-speed, constantly available information stream that forms the hallmark of contemporary societies in the global north is not at this time available to the people of Cuba, “El Paquete Semanal” forms a unique and ingenious workaround. It is bought cheaply and distributed from hand to hand, shared and downloaded. Containing everything from entertainment to software to international news, “El Paquete” acts as an object that mediates Cuba and the rest of the world

Note: The Cuban Matrix title was not the original title for this project nor the exhibition design.

          Ariamma Contino / Alexander Hernández / Aesthetical Militancy / 2016