On November 18, a two person photography and collage exhibit, “La Habana que me han dao, La Habana que te dejo” (The Havana I’ve been given, the Havana I’m leaving), by Cuban creators Sonia Almaguer Darna and Denys San Jorge Rodriguez, opened at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba.
Both of them join here their disciplines and achieve another interesting Havana. And the fact is that Cuban art has always been the origin of multiple cultural projects dedicated to this city. With this exhibition, the artists pay a just tribute in these fourteen pieces to the Cuban capital for its 503rd anniversary, in which their passion and dedication to this city and its art can be appreciated in their works.
In the words of the catalog, poet and art critic Jorge R. Bermudez on this proposal: “Neither Sonia nor Denys are just another strollers, but witnesses of an act of life that is renewed every morning with the sunrise: to make the emblematic buildings of the city the central issue of a visual identity that identifies them as art makers.”
Both with photography and collage technique, they appeal to the resource of construction and deconstruction of the city from the collage. Works that suggest another city, other worlds, allowing the public to invent and fabricate other spaces that can be surreal, abstract, realistic. This is a city of dreams and mystery, in which spaces open up within the composition suggested by the photography captured by themselves in the streets of Havana and with the masterful handling of collage.
These are interesting works that invite us, until March 2023, to visit, to look at these pieces and to reinvent a city with art. We will thus see the imprint of these artists on the canvas and we will fabricate our own spaces and rediscover that the city will always be eternal, beautiful and imagined also between photography and collage, a Havana that seduces us.
The Artists:
Sonia Almaguer has a degree in Art History and graduated from the School of Creative Photography of Havana and is a member of UNEAC. She has sixteen personal and other collective exhibitions in Cuba, the United States, England and Argentina. Her work as a photographer stands out for the extensive record of images in the world of theatrical photography, and cultivating other photographic genres such as documentary photography and portraiture. She has conquered the first laurels in the 85th Anniversary of the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, and Afro-Cuban Culture, (2016) and the third in the Artistic Lens Contest, (2017), all in Havana.
Denys San Jorge graduated from the San Alejandro Academy, member of UNEAC, has exhibited his pieces in Cuba, Mexico, Egypt and Algeria. His photographic work “La Virgen de papá y mi sueño con el Cobre”, was given as a gift to His Holiness Pope Francis during his visit to Cuba, and anthologized in the book a la Caridad del Cobre by the Cuban-American collector Emilio Cueto. He holds, among others, the Grand Prize of the Eduardo Abela Salon in San Antonio de los Baños, (2013), and the Italian prizes of Ventipertrenta Photography in Belforte del Chienti, Macerata (2016) and International for Peace in Brescia (2022), both in Italy.
“La Habana que me han dao, La Habana que te dejo,” is on until March 18.
From our staff writers and editors.
