This week we have the pleasure of an interview with the Cuban artist, Denys San Jorge Rodriguez. The Covid pandemic has caused not only the death of over three million people worldwide, but it is has forced many into isolation. That isolation has become, for many artists, a period of abundant creativity.
“Toponimia Mecánica,” is the artistic production from the isolation of San Jorge. This series is the assemblage of ordinary workday tools such as wrenches, nuts, rivets, clamps, into metallic works honoring the names of countries and forming messages of humanity, solidarity and peace.
He is also a talented photographer and writer, the winner of prizes throughout his career for his work in these mediums. His art can be found in personal and collective exhibitions in Cuba, Mexico, Italy, Spain and Holland.
San Jorge is a member of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) and the National Union of Historians of Cuba. In 2004, he graduated in engraving and drawing from the National Academy of Fine Arts, San Alejandro.
In 2012, San Jorge graduated from the Literary Training Center, Onelio Jorge Cardoso, with several published books. He received mention in the Felix Pita Rodriguez literary contest for his book, Patria Interior, published by Editorial Unicornio, Cuba, (2012).
As a photographer, his work has appeared in books and magazines such as “La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre en el alma del pueblo cubano” by Emilio Cueto, “La abstracción en la pintura cubana” by Luis García Peraza (Editorial Arista Publishing Co, Florida, USA) and “La pintura abstracta en Cuba” also by Garcia, (Editorial Boloña), and the magazine CRITICA from the Universidad Autónoma de Puebla in Mexico.
He has also won photography awards.
Most recently, San Jorge published the book, Desde el Callejón de los Perros, a collection of essays and chronicles (Editora Argos Iberoamericana. USA). It is available from Amazon.
Since 2012, in Bauta and in Artemisa, he is the director of the artistic-literary group, Peña Mezcla, a meeting place for artists and intellectuals.
San Jorge currently works as the director of the Angerona Art Gallery in Artemisa.
Cuba Business Report: Denys, you taught printmaking after graduating from the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts in 2004. When did you start creating art from antique tools?
Denys:
Yes, after graduating I spent several years, first as an assistant in a printmaking workshop and then I taught workshops there. But it was specifically with my series “Paisajes” in the Arslatina exhibition in Mexicali, Baja California in 2007. Later in 2008 came my first personal exhibition with the series “Disarmament” and so the constant use of tools began to be perceived in different works of mine and later exhibitions as in my personal project “The French spy a few miles from the concentration camp” and in installation pieces, such as those exhibited in collective projects such as “The End of the bullet”, or my piece “Change of state”.
What is the relationship between your family and your art?
Denys:
Very intimate. My work comes from my family environment. After my graduation from San Alejandro was when I began my professional work inspired by family memory and memories. My father died the year I graduated and it was hard. I kept his toolboxes, sheet metal material and with these I decided, inspired by that pain, to make a work of art paying homage to his memory, that is, to bring those objects and materials to the universe of art.
First, there were pieces that had to do more with the graphic with painting on metals and the installation “Hijo de papá” (Father’s son), then came the pieces with the objectual and mechanical visuality through photography. One of the pieces that has had the greatest impact and with a close family relationship is “La Virgen de Papá y mi sueño con el Cobre” (Dad’s Virgin and my dream with Copper), exhibited in Cuba and abroad, dedicated to the Holy Virgin of Charity of El Cobre, Patroness of Cuba, given to Pope Francis during his visit to Cuba and catalogued in the book of the collector Emilio Cueto.
You are a writer, photographer and artist. You have published a collection of essays and stories in your book DESDE EL CALLEJON DE LOS PERROS. How do you see yourself? Artist, photographer or writer?
I see myself as a visual artist or as a multidisciplinary creator, who has tried to flirt with the literary universe. Desde el Callejón de los Perros, published by Editora Argois Iberoamericana in 2020, brings together texts of mine written about culture and its creators, history, religion and freemasonry in my town of Bauta.
How has your work evolved since your first exhibition in 2008?
It has gone through several processes. I like to experiment and even within the visual arts, I have liked to change in parallel to make a work marked by the self-referential, personal memory and that mechanical universe, and mutate between different visuals, including the series “Habana tomada” exhibited in Barcelona in 2008, I have made abstract work and also collages from photography with the theme of the rescue of local history as in my series “Bauta Long Playing.”
What are you currently working on?
I am currently working on several projects at the same time, besides continuing to create with the series “Toponimia Mecánica.” A photographic series that I started as a result of the Covid pandemic, at the same time the virus began to spread to many countries. My intention was to build with my tools on a metal plate and from the living room of my house, concepts with a strong symbolic charge, with the names of many countries, towns and cities affected … as the first Wuhan, and so have emerged on the metal pieces that allude to Madrid, Rome, New York, Miami, London, Mexico, Brazil or Ecuador, among hundreds of works and my town Bauta which was also affected. As well as words so necessary among them Solidarity, Humanity, Peace … but all as a tribute and respect, dedicated to the sick, the fallen and their families, to symbolically create in the imagination of societies, a possible hope from art and a conscience to repair so to speak and with these tools to help, build and heal at least the spirit among human beings.
Many writers and intellectuals joined in and dedicated poems to these pieces from the isolation, and it has also been part of other individual projects of other colleagues such as my work in Italy in the book “Hilando Puentes” by Liudys Carmona and Yoydel Santines.
But the greatest impact of Toponimia Mecánica has been with the poet Dimarys Aguila, with whom another very interesting and more constant project emerged as “Hierro & Poesía.” It is a project between the two of us, poems to each piece of my photographic series with the idea of materializing this project of ours in a book and a joint exhibition.
I continue then with Toponimia Mecánica from home, which is repairing, assembling and giving strength. It is a project that has had great impact and repercussion, in the public and, above all, also in me, as a creator and the great importance in creating and thus thinking of others, creating sometimes with pain, thinking of the Other when composing with tools, of a friend or family member who is here or in a distant country. Toponimia Mecánica is love for all.
Denys, it has been a delight to meet you to discuss your art and the strong messages of peace conveyed in your work. I look forward to seeing more of your productions.
To learn more about the work of Denys San Jorge Rodriguez, his website can be found here. Denys can be contacted through his Facebook page here. Follow him on Twitter @@denyssanjorge.
