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Artist Creates Parallel Website of Havana’s Art Biennale to increase awareness of the censorship and oppression

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Artist Creates Parallel Website of Havana’s Art Biennale to increase awareness of the censorship and oppression

 

Miami, FL April 30, 2015 Cuban born artist and Miami resident, Henry Ballate has created a parallel site of Havana’s Art Biennale to increase awareness of the oppressionand censorship of artists and their work during this year’s Biennale that takes place in Havana, May 22 through June 22.

 

Esthetically, the parallel site, Bienal de la Habana 2015 “Between Censorship and Oppression,” is a replica of the Bienal’s official site, Bienal de la Habana 2015  Between Ideas and Experience”, but includes many of the artists, art critics and art works that have been banned from this year’s Biennale. The purpose of the parallel site is to showcase the democratization of the internet and the power of its audience. “Technology makes it possible to uncover truth and artistic expression in spite of government oppression,” says Henry Ballate. The parallel site is also a platform for freedom of expression and the promotion of well-known artists like Tania Bruguera or Danilo “El Sexto”, who are currently facing criminal charges in Cuba for exercising their right to freedom of expression.  The parallel site aims to capture the internet traffic of users searching for the fair’s official website, while defending the right to artistic expression and freedom of speech.

 

http://bienaldelahabana.com/ “Between Censorship and Oppression”, includes images of artistic works, but also performance videos and interviews of some of the artists that the official site lists as traitors, cursed and renegades of the island nation. The parallel site cautions artists, gallerists, curators and critics that entrance is only granted to those with a submissive and obedient stance (Aldo Menéndez). And, after they are granted entrance, there is always the risk that they will not be allowed to leave (Tania Bruguera).

Aside from the aforementioned Cuban artists, the parallel site also includes other artists that have come forward in support and in defense of these artists and their stance on freedom of expresssion in Cuba including China’s Ai Wei Wei, Guatemala’s Regina José Galindo, Chile’s Christian Viveros-Faune and Octavio Zaya as well as curators and art critics from Argentina, Guatemala, Peru, Puerto Rico, and the United States.

As explained by its author and site creator Henry Ballate, who is no stranger to controversial art pieces, “the re-appropriation and creation of the parallel site is an act of  re-contextualizing and simply altering pre-existing information and to create work whose foundation is based on that that came before it, especially as it highlights the importance for artist to have freedom of expression in an international forum.” For him, it is a working method, a vehicle that is used for a variety of points of view that have been used throughout the history of art.

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