Historia natural
(Natural history)

2008 – 2010
5 Works / Video, Video Installation, Installation
Created by: Javier Castro, Luis Gárciga and Grethell Rasúa
CDAV – Center for the Development of the Visual Arts, Havana / 2010

Human nature, the behavior of humans in a given time, is also more or less explicitly registered in the spaces they inhabit.  When we become aware of this, the objects with which they establish a relationship and that with some discretion give indication of them, suggests the need to review them. Thus found, objects function as a revealing factor, as being sharing experiences in a promiscuous dimension integrating something larger: life, experience. The flavor of historical environment gravitates on them, but their form, their content, is essential and over and above time constrains. In their condition as mediators, they reveal relationships among the people, exposing conflicts, tastes, passions and illusions, all that may frequently remain out of what most define as the spirit of a circumstance or of a time.

And this is because it is always possible to construe the sense of an object which goes beyond its immediate use, its apparent raison to be. When brushing time, when having a dialogue and a direct groping with what is social, it becomes an exploration in itself and a host of realities. Gathering them is expressing evidences of the present; classifying them is a first logic attempt. Some are present there: these, those, the others. These, the directly implied ones, are encumbered by the weight of consequences. The others are witnesses telling stories. And those, which are not yet and, probably, prefer an apparent anonymity to declare, a little time from now, enveloped in memories. Our complicity makes us respect them. Aware of their position as witnesses, we maintain a distant proximity, protecting and guarding them, if need be.

Avail oneself of up-dated systems to put together all that is perceived is normal in human beings. As trained individuals, because of education and exercise, we search in art practice methodologies of our own to understand. Each piece thus becomes a sort of mnemonic resource, a trick to make things stick to their essence. This is what a hand-made note minutely written the night before and hidden for a test to be taken the morning after is. A form of document more closely linked to the history of subjectivities as historiographic variants than with the register of the gesture or motion of the clairvoyant or inspired artist.  Structured from art, from aesthetic proposals referring to the natural state of things in their context, they clarify the need of understanding tomorrow, specifying what is recent and being aware of their adjacent and permanent extinction.

J. Castro, L. Gárciga & G. Rasúa
Havana, July 2008

Text for the catalog of The Historia Natural Exhibit by Magaly Espinosa

List of artworks and artists:

De los pueblos el arte y los fantasmas (Of towns, art and ghosts) / 2008 – 2010
Intemperie (Malecón, Parque de la Fraternidad, Calle G) / 2008 – 2010
Contra todas las paredes (Against all the walls) / 2008 – 2010      
Los dueños de las cosas (The owners of things) / 2008-2010
La vieja objetualidad (The old objectuality) / 2008-2010