Last week, while the majority of campus was on break, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art unveiled “Diaspora, Identity, and Race: Cuba Today.”
The exhibition features new works from contemporary Cuban artists who focus on issues of racism, homophobia and other problems occurring in Cuban society that have been silenced by the Cuban government over the last few decades.
Remaining on display until June 21, the exhibition’s main purpose is to give current Cuban artists a platform to express their feelings toward the state of the country. After the Cuban revolution in 1959, the government officially declared that issues of racism, sexism, prostitution and poverty had all been solved. In reality, many of these problems persisted. Because of the government’s claims, many of these topics were taboo to talk about. The art featured in the Schnitzer exhibit is a representation of the artists’ feelings and emotions of growing up in a society where addressing such issues was strongly discouraged.
“Only recently in the past 20 or 30 years have artists started to come forward and discuss these issues openly in their work and sometimes to very severe punishments,” said Ashley Gibson, exhibit curator.
The exhibit combines quite a few different art forms, including sculpture, video, paintings, photography and a few others to accurately depict the feelings of the artists.
“Hopefully all this work sitting together can kind of inform some large conversation about racism or other social issues,” Gibson said. “While it’s definitely getting the word out there about what’s going on in Cuba, people can take this and kind of relate it to their own experiences.”
Gibson, a University master’s student with a contemporary art history focus, started working on the exhibit in the fall. Working with the executive director of the Schnitzer, Jill Hartz, Gibson was able to use pre-existing art that was stored in the museum’s collection, while also bringing in a number of new pieces. There are a total of 28 pieces in the exhibit.
The exhibit takes pieces from as far back as 1990 but focuses on more recently produced art — some as new as from 2010. A total of 19 artists, all Cuban-born, are featured. Each artist brings a unique perspective to the exhibit with some artists considered some of Cuba’s most influential, while others are relatively new aspiring artists.
Almost every artist in the exhibit is considered to be part of a generation in Cuba that endured economic hardship brought on by the fall of the Soviet Union. After Cuba lost roughly 80 percent of its trade because of the fall of its powerful ally, the country’s living conditions dropped significantly. Many of the artists from this generation created their art with little money and limited resources. Most of the pieces on display project the strong emotional reaction to the two decades that have followed that time period.
The exhibit is sponsored by The Americas in a Globalized World Initiative and the Department of Romance Languages, along with the Schnitzer. 
Anyone interested in seeing “Cuba Today” or any other exhibit can partake in a visit during the museum’s free first Friday, April 1.
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