The Sparks of Civil Society in Cuba: Afro-Cuban Cultural Production, Art Collectives, and
Centro Provincial de Artes Plasticas y Diseño in Havana, and the second
Queloides at the Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales. With the
original Queloides, for the first time a visual art exhibition dealing
explicitly with the dynamic of race in contemporary Cuba was held.^5
The exhibitions spurred debate in the art world and beyond and had
an important impact in opening up a discussion on race.^6
The collective from the 1990s with the most longevity is OMNI-
ZonaFranca. Based in Alamar, east of Havana, the group has been
working since 1997 on a variety of artistic projects, including poetry
and sound works, performance events, public interventions, commu-
nity projects, theatrical performances with children and a festival, Poe-
sía Sin Fin, held during the last two weeks of December each year.
OMNI is the strongest example of a collective that has taken on what
many of the various projects and collectives of the 1980s had set out
to do, that is, to engage on a long-term basis within a community, in a
material, creative and spiritual sense, through art. It is relevant to note
that Alamar is a massive housing project built in the 1970s to accom-
modate the population overflow of Havana’s poorest neighborhoods.
Geographically isolated and poorly served by public transportation,
and with a large black population, Alamar is considered a “marginal”
area. The artists of OMNI are a racially mixed group and their work
incorporates rap, spoken word, and other expressive forms that have
emerged out of the struggles of African-descended people. Unlike the
artists of Grupo Antillano and their contemporaries, for both prag-
matic and philosophical reasons the members of OMNI have skirted
the question of an explicitly named Afro-Cuban group identity; they
emphasize their diverse spiritual practices, artistic influences, collec-
tive process, and commitment to their community. OMNI’s longevity- The artists in this exhibition were Douglas Pérez, René Peña, Elio Rodríguez, Ger-
trudis Rivalta, Roberto Diago, Manuel Arenas, José Angel Vincench, Alvaro Almaguer,
Omar Pascual Castillo and Aléxis Esquivel. - The artists in Ni Músicos, Ni Deportistas were Douglas Pérez, René Peña, Elio Rodrí-
guez, Manuel Arenas and Aléxis Esquivel. - An expanded and updated version of Queloides, organized by historian Alejandro de
la Fuente and artist Elio Rodríguez was on view in Havana at the Centro Wifredo Lam in
the spring of 2010 and traveled to the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh in the fall of 2010.