THE EXHIBITION

ALIBI is a curatorial proposal by ENTRE and the creative collective Forma Foco, as a part of the 3rd exhibition cycle of On the New. Viennese Scenes and Beyond at Belvedere 21 Museum of Contemporary Art in Vienna, Austria (on view 25 October - 3 December 2023). 

The concept of ALIBI is conceived in the context of widespread national frustration in Cuba, generated by increased repression and violence unleashed by the Cuban government following the anti-government protests of July 11, 2021. As a result, the Justicia 11J platform was founded (one of the invited participants of ALIBI), and has documented nearly 2000 political detentions, nearly 1000 people with prison sentences of up to 30 years, and a sharp increase in emigration for political reasons since July 11, 2021.

ALIBI is an alternative to this historic fate. Its curatorial model consists of inviting Cuban artists, activists, and human rights platforms to collaborate on artistic proposals that imagine the future of Cuba outside the straitjacket that its history has become. Their multimedia responses provide ways of reading Cuba’s future anew through artistic proposals, collaborative gestures, and communication strategies emerging from methodologies that intersect the work of human rights platforms, researchers, and artists of various disciplines.

The specific interest in working with human rights platforms, in addition to artists, stems from the amount of information that these platforms independently provide, and the importance of providing access to data that challenges deep-seated narratives established by totalitarian power in Cuba. The presence of platforms like Justicia 11J or the Centro de Estudios Convivencia encourages civic organization and independent understanding in a political context where the Cuban Communist Party has governed the country for 64 years with a power that exceeds the Constitution, harassing and persecuting dissident thought.

The word "alibi," beyond its definition in legal terms, has a mystical symbolism. It represents a sacred refuge, a spiritual alibi that invites exploration of states and truths beyond the obvious. It is a portal, a connection to the transcendental, a space to project alternative realities as future possibility.

—

Guests: Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, Camila Lobón, Raychel Carrión, Ernesto Oroza, Julio Llópiz-Casal, Liliam Dooley, Luis Alberto Mariño Fernández, Justicia 11J, José Raúl Gallego Ramos, Mitch EC, Kevin Avila, Carla Maria Bellido, Ezequiel Suárez, Centro de Estudios Convivencia, Yimit Ramírez, Claudia Patricia Pérez.

Curated by: ENTRE (Marilyn Volkman) & Forma Foco (Solveig Font, Lester Alvarez Meno, Aminta D’Cárdenas, and Julio Llópiz-Casal)

ENTRE is an independent project space in Vienna dedicated to promoting social and political understanding through art, focusing on intersections of artistic research, activism and human rights. Forma Foco is a creative collective raising awareness in international artistic contexts about Cuban realities marginalized by political power.

--

Über das neue at Belvedere 21:  What is going on in local art scenes, studios, and alternative exhibition spaces? And how can one exhibition capture the diversity of the production and presentation of art? In an expanded dynamic, the show presents around forty-five artists and twenty-four exhibitions within the exhibition—curated by individual project spaces—and thus offers fresh perspectives on what art can be today, on its themes, aesthetics, and forms of expression, and how it is perceived.

Cycle 3 (part 1, on view until 3 December 2023):  Exhibitions within the exhibition curated by EFES42, ENTRE, Improper Walls, Size Matters and works by Julia Belova, Ting-Jung Chen, mirabella paidamwoyo* dziruni, Charlotte Gash, Natalia Gurova, Marc Henry, Magdalena Kreinecker, Simon Lehner, Juliana Lindenhofer, Viktoria Schmid, Siggi Sekira, Laurence Sturla, Huda Takriti, Marianne Vlaschits

Curatorial team: Christiane Erharter, Andrea Kopranovic, Ana Petrović, Claudia Slanar, Luisa Ziaja | Exhibition architecture: AKT

www.belvedere.at/en/on-the-new-3

____________________________________