In Conversation: On Picturing Cuba: Art, Culture, and Identity on the Island and in the Diaspora

Anelys Alvarez is assistant curator and collection manager for the Jorge M. Pérez Collection and The Related Group. An expert in international contemporary art and art history, Alvarez collaborates closely with Chairman/CEO Jorge M. Pérez and the firm’s art director on all cultural matters, ranging from curating project-specific collections for its esteemed public art program to acquisitions for the corporate art collection.

Edited by Jorge Duany – director of the Cuban Research Institute and professor of anthropology at Florida International University – and featuring an impressive list of contributors including Anelys Alvarez, Lynnette M. F. Bosch, María A. Cabrera Arús, Iliana Cepero, Ramón Cernuda, Emilio Cueto, Carol Damian, Victor Deupi, Jorge Duany, Alison Fraunhar, Andrea O’Reilly Herrera, Jean-François Lejeune, Abigail McEwen, Ricardo Pau-Llosa, and E. Carmen Ramos, Picturing Cuba: Art, Culture, and Identity on the Island and in the Diaspora (University of Florida Press) explores the evolution of Cuban visual art and its links to cubanía, or Cuban cultural identity. These essays trace the creation of Cuban art through shifting political, social, and cultural circumstances. The illustrations feature artwork from the Spanish colonial, republican, and post-revolutionary periods of Cuban history and the contemporary diaspora. Isabel Alvarez Borland, co-editor of Cuban-American Literature and Art: Negotiating Identities praised as “compelling and relevant. Takes readers on a journey through the history of Cuban art’s significance, demonstrating how art has mirrored the cultural life of the country as well as how politics affect the production of art itself.”