If you need a Cuban fix but can't find your favorite cigar smuggler, have a stroll down Bull Street to the College of Charleston's Avery Center, where Beyond the Door, the debut exhibit of the Charleston International Arts Festival, opened Thursday with a robust smattering of Cuban artwork.
Beyond the Door features numerous Cuban artists whose work varies in technique and subject but also forms a composite sketch of Cuba's aesthetics, philosophies, and challenges.
Rebekah Jacob, a gallery owner, is curator of Beyond the Door. For the Charleston International Arts Festival, a debut event, she visited Cuba and returned with pieces of artwork that reflect the complicated circumstances that dictate life on the island just 90 miles south of the Florida Keys.
Artwork is one of the few materials to remain exempt from the U.S trade embargo on Cuba, a curiosity considering art's ability to depict a culture's status. Given these expressions of discontentment, one has to wonder if the U.S. allows art legal passage, because it's nature as a lens through which the failings of Castro's oppression, and now that of his brother, Raúl, are plain to see.
Kevin Murphy for the Post and Courier, March 2008