Cuba Now

As the art world flocks to Havana, a revolutionary gallery owner emerges as a key tastemaker

This weekend, the art world is descending on Cuba for the 10th Havana Biennial to see new works from hundreds of young artists that are on display in the city's museums, crumbling colonial forts and baroque churches. Many art insiders will also make a stop at a space that's not on the biennial's roster: the living room of Sandra Ceballos.

Ms. Ceballos manages the country's oldest independent art space, one of the few galleries in Cuba not funded by government-controlled cultural institutions. Art professionals say her gallery, run out of her apartment, is nurturing some of the country's most cutting-edge local talent at a time when Cuba is positioning itself as the next hotbed for contemporary art. Ms. Ceballos was among the first to exhibit Cuban art stars like Carlos Garaicoa, Angel Delgado and Tania Bruguera, whose works are highly sought after by major institutions like the Tate Modern in London.

Behind her iron gate at Calle 6, No. 602 lies a little-seen Havana brimming with tattoo artists, punk rockers, and teenagers in T-shirts that read, "Viva el diversionismo ideologico." Right now, her rust-colored walls feature Orlando Silvera's pencil drawing of a clown, his mouth sewn shut by the word, "Cubano." A concrete patio is covered, graffiti-style, with the names of artists and curators who say they have been censored in Cuba over the years. Artist Luis Gárciga and others also papered a space in the living room with sticky notes listing Web sites that won't work in Cuba, like Generacion Y, Yoani Sánchez's blog about Havana life that often criticizes the Cuban government.

The works are part of her new exhibit, timed to coincide with the biennial, called "La Perra Subasta," or "The Auction of the Big Dog," a group show for artworks that contain letters or words.

Ben Rodriguez-Cubeñas, a collector who is chairman of the Cuban Artists Fund in New York, says he's planning to bring at least 40 of his art-world friends by Ms. Ceballos's house while he's in town for the biennial next week: "Everything she does is gutsy."

The fact that Ms. Ceballos has never been shut down is a source of great intrigue for Cuba-watchers around the world. Some say it signals a new tolerance by Raúl Castro, who has enacted a few reforms -- allowing cellphones, for example -- since taking over the country's leadership from his brother last year because of Fidel's failing health.

Others say she exercises just enough restraint to avoid real trouble. Cuban artist Glexis Novoa, who lives in Miami but often travels to Havana, says, "She knows that the government will try to deal with you and tolerate you, up to a limit."

In a country where the biggest art patron is the Cuban government, alternative art spaces that aren't on the state payroll are nearly nonexistent. Artists who want to exhibit here typically attend government art schools before vying for a coveted slot in Havana's handful of sanctioned galleries like Galeria Habana or the biennial, Cuba's biggest art event. Gallery owners and biennial curators say they are free to show whatever they like, but they tend to sidestep pieces that directly criticize the ruling Castro family or their policies. Ms. Ceballos, who mounts exhibits with the regularity of a seasoned art dealer, is only allowed by law to sell her own artwork, but she can help collectors contact other artists if they're interested in buying other works.

Her role is key because the demand for edgy Cuban art has skyrocketed lately. Prices can easily top $40,000 for work by stars like Kcho and Yoan Capote, who show in Cuba's sanctioned galleries as well as in U.S. and European galleries. The U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, in place since Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, allows Americans to buy Cuban art.

This week, at least 10 groups from museums like the Bronx Museum and El Museo del Barrio in New York secured humanitarian visas so they could fly into Havana. (The Bronx Museum delegation packed vitamins into their luggage to donate during their stay.) Major American collectors like Ron Pizzutti and Howard Farber have also come to town.

Cuban art is the main attraction at this week's biennial, though the official exhibitions feature over 300 artists from 54 countries in venues throughout the city. Crowds are expected to form around Humberto Diaz's faux tsunami, which he made by suspending wave-like strips of cloth from the roof of the Cuba Pavilion. The National Museum of Fine Arts also offers a crash course on 20th century Cuban art in "Resistencia y libertad: Wifredo Lam, Raúl Martínez y José Bedia," including an untitled 1964 abstract by Mr. Martínez that features a newspaper snapshot of the Commandante himself, Fidel Castro.

Ms. Ceballos's space, which she calls Aglutinador, or the Glue, comes under occasional fire from Cuba's cultural establishment. The biggest blowup occurred in October when the National Council of Visual Arts, a state agency that organizes the biennial and other major art events across Cuba, sent a mass email to its member artists denouncing her for spending time with human-rights activists and producing "propagandistic" shows, according to a copy of the email obtained by The Wall Street Journal. Ms. Ceballos denied the claims and her shows have continued.

A spokesman for Ruben del Valle Lanterón, the director of the National Council of Visual Arts, confirmed that one of its employees sent the email but said the controversy was overblown. Later, Mr. Lanterón said he believes alternative art spaces should be able to coexist with state-run institutions even if he doesn't always appreciate Ms. Ceballos's artistic choices. "In her early years she really rescued artists who weren't well acknowledged, and I respect that," Mr. Lanterón added.

Ms. Ceballos seems bored by her role in the debate: "I'm not interested in pushing the political. That's for politicians. I'm just interested in defending the artists." She says she neither seeks political art for shows nor filters it out.

The scene cultivated at Aglutinador is more irreverent than overtly political. Ms. Ceballos, age 48, is a petite woman who wears combat boots and has a tattoo on her arm of a comic-strip character, Salomon, who was censored from Cuba's papers years ago. She exudes the calm, organized demeanor of a den mother, yet she has a penchant for dying her hair fire-engine red. In a city where people confront layers of bureaucracy, artists say Ms. Ceballos likes to produce shows quickly and never questions the outlandish ideas they can foist on her home, from obscene doodles to artworks glued to her tree leaves. Coco Fusco, who now lives in the U.S., did a performance piece in 2000 that involved digging a waist-high pit into Ms. Ceballos's garden.

Typical gallery openings in New York last two hours, followed by fancy dinners for a chosen few. Last Saturday at Aglutinador, the opening lasted nine hours, with a steady stream of people filtering in and out. Ms. Ceballos's parents, who live next door, and her 8-year-old son, Oscar, mingled easily with a college crowd sporting nose rings. Some stayed for hours, hanging out under the patio's pink bougainvillea or cramming into the apartment's narrow living room or adjoining kitchen. At 11 p.m., Ms. Ceballos gently shooed everyone out so she could put her son to bed in the 10-foot-square loft bedroom they share above the living room.

Like many Cubans, she lives on a financial shoestring. Recently divorced, she has a monthly budget of around $100 a month, though it can cost up to $800 to produce her shows because it's expensive to get the art photographed and programs printed. She has received grants over the years from European nonprofits like the Prince Claus Fund in the Netherlands and Spain's Ministry of Culture, some of it configured so she can pass money on to younger Cuban artists who need support to finish art projects. She refuses to ask for money from the Cuban government so she can "stay independent."

She was born in 1961, two years after the revolution, in the eastern city of Guantánamo that gives its name to the U.S. military base nearby. By the time she graduated from the National Academy of Visual Arts San Alejandro in 1982, Cuba's art scene was undergoing its own revolution. Ms. Ceballos, then an emerging artist, watched unsanctioned art spaces sprouting in homes and unusual venues around town and she dove in. In 1989, she landed her first major show at the Castillo de la Fuerza with "Beauty and the Beast," a series of paintings made by lumping together masses of hospital sheets, sponges, blood and hair.

Shortly afterward, the end of Soviet oil subsidies in Cuba plunged Cuba into the economic crisis dubbed the "Special Period," and she struggled along with everyone else to get enough food to survive, often working by candlelight because there was no electricity. It was in these fraught times that she and her boyfriend at the time, artist Ezequiel Suarez, decided to start holding experimental art shows in their home. The first show in spring 1994, "Degenerate Art in the Era of the Market," paid homage to masters like Ernst Kirchner who were persecuted by the Nazis.

The show that created such a stir last fall began as an experiment to see if she could create an exhibit completely devoid of leadership. She invited a group of 25 artists to come to her home and display whatever they wanted, wherever they wanted, curator-free. The concept was a bit cerebral, so for pizzazz she titled the show, "Curadores Go Home!"

Two days before the show opened, she received the following unsigned email from the National Council of Visual Arts: "A propagandistic show with openly political ends has been programmed for next Saturday, October 18, 2008 in the 'Espacio Aglutinador.' .... We denounce the attempt to give artistic coverage to provocations of this nature. We regret that Sandra Ceballos goes along with the game of the servants of the empire."

She says she was floored. She quickly fired off a reply: "It is an embarrassment for the artists and everyone involved in the art world in Cuba to read texts so pretentious, decadent and unoriginal."

Emails began to crisscross among dozens of Cuban artists now living everywhere from Ecuador to Madrid to Miami. Ms. Fusco, in New York, started an online petition of support, and after two days it had 300-plus signatures. Ms. Ceballos, who had temporarily suspended the show, decided to go to the council instead and seek a meeting with Mr. Lanterón. She was led to his office.

The pair talked about her past accomplishments for a few minutes, and she left. She says she didn't get a satisfactory reason for the email or an apology. But ultimately it didn't matter. Several artists in her show backed out -- one because of the controversy, two because they suddenly had to take trips out of Havana -- but the rest stayed put.

The ordeal even inspired her latest piece, hanging now above her red sofa. It's a poster colored to look like the Cuban flag.

—Wilson Lievano contributed to this article.
Write to Kelly Crow at kelly.crow@wsj.com