Cuba is in convulsions. Only a few months after hurricanes Gustav and Ike swept through the Caribbean, drenching Havana and devastating crops and villages on the eastern side of the island, the always-cash-strapped socialist state is still laboring to get back on its feet. The recovery effort, marked by the government’s newest rationing and price-control program for food, has come at a time when most Cubans’ formidable, everyday struggle for survival was already about as tough as anyone could imagine it to be.

With its government-controlled, centralized economy, Cuba is by no means the home of a consumer culture, and nothing comes easily. In Havana, for example, there is almost no advertising visible anywhere, even for state-owned companies. Even political propaganda posters, which a visitor might expect to be plentiful, seem to pop up only randomly. Small neighborhood stores are sparse and offer only the most basic goods such as soap, toothpaste, shampoo or shoes, and prices for many products are high. The national telephone system is a target of jokes, and finding a public phone that functions is a crapshoot. Standing in line at a bank, post office or ice cream stand is an exercise in a kind of patience that, perhaps in theory, should help build a sense of revolutionary fortitude but mostly just wears people down.

Nevertheless, in the face of such hardships Cuba’s artists have continued to find the energy and resources to create a rich and diverse range of work, much of which is as engaging and imaginative as the best contemporary art to be found in other, more affluent places.......


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