Tradiciones (des)dibujadas

Throughout the history of art, traditional forms — drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture — have continually tried to explain themselves, and in that questioning they have unfolded toward expansion. Drawing, as the primal act of mark-making and the first artistic expression to which expansion was intrinsic, is no exception. From early-20th-century Expressionism through the conceptualism of the 1950s–70s and into the present, drawing has steadily loosened the bond between technique and final object, embracing process, hybridization, the breaking of moulds, and combinatory play. The 12th Havana Biennial — an intentionally radical edition — made clear that drawing was present as both vehicle and outcome of complex working processes. Tradiciones (des)dibujadas takes that legacy as its starting point and asks not what is considered contemporary drawing today, but how something can be drawing: through its materials, surfaces, scales, spatial relations, the spectator it addresses, and the artist's own experience. The exhibition identifies two main directions in recent work associated with drawing. The first is self-reflexive — drawing that thinks itself, plays with its own definitions, and subverts traditional codes while preserving the essential: the line and its technical refinement. This line is represented by Ariamna Contino, Antonio Espinosa, Moisés Finalé, Alex Hernández, Inti Hernández, Frank Mujica, William Pérez, and Lázaro Saavedra. The second is drawing that migrates toward painting, sculpture, installation, video, and design — drawing as part of a process, as tool — represented by Glexis Novoa, Glauber Ballestero, Duvier del Dago, Renier Quer, and Dariel de la Torre. These two paths can themselves "blur": a single work may carry both formal and conceptual concerns at once. Curated by Loliett Marrero and Claudia Taboada.