Usa Forum - Canvases reflect the pain of their past

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8/25/2006 2:29:00 PM

Art
Canvases reflect the pain of their past
By LENNIE BENNETT, Times art critic
Published August 25, 2006

Demi, a Miami artist, left her real name behind when she left Cuba.

"It means half or small," she said. "In 1961 I was 7 years old when my
father, a soldier, was executed by the new government and my life
changed completely. I lost everything."

Her mother remained in Cuba with Demi's two older sisters but sent her
to Puerto Rico to live with relatives. They were eventually reunited in
the United States, but the artist said she grew up introverted and
"full of hate."

"I blamed the Cuban people, not just Fidel Castro," she said. "But
thanks to art, I was able to release myself from hatred."

Marriage at 28 to Arturo Rodriguez, an artist and another Cuban exile,
was the catalyst, she said. She was an actor when they met, but he
encouraged her to paint. Her canvases, elaborate and detailed, read
like dreams of longing and love.

Her subjects are herself and Rodriguez, often surrounded by "strange
children, like dolls with no hair or ears, a reflection of the hurt
that will never heal."

The Kiss, shown here, has Demi's romantic lyricism tinged with
melancholy and longing.

Demi mostly has found peace with her past.

"My art in certain ways is political," she said. "The past still feeds
it, but now I paint from humanity. I think of all the exiled and
dispossessed children."

Maria Emilia, artist and executive director of Florida Craftsmen
Gallery in St. Petersburg, also left Cuba in 1961. She was 14. Unlike
Demi, she was only briefly separated from her parents who joined her
several months later.

Emilia, too, has experienced a shift over the years in her feelings
about the Cuban diaspora and the way they translate to her art.

"For many years, my work was only about the exile experience," Emilia
said, "and this effort to make sure people immediately recognized I was
a Cuban artist. I did not deviate until the mid 1990s when I
encountered the concept of heroism."

A project dealing with people who were killed protesting other
totalitarian regimes, such as the Nazis, changed her.

"I realized I was missing the point looking from the perspective of the
oppressor," Emilia said. "I shifted to the regular people, the ones who
don't want to die or be martyrs but assume responsibility and rise to
greatness."

But her past remains with her in many of her works. An ongoing series
of elaborate drawings are self-portraits of herself as a child. A
recent work, Girl with Birdcages and Paper Birds, shown here, is a
photographic collage with a valentine from her late father and a
photograph of herself at 6 "in one of the big skirts my mother made for
me."

Lennie Bennett can be reached at 727 893-8293 or lennie@sptimes.com

http://www.sptimes.com/2006/08/25/Floridian/Canvases_reflect_...

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Canvases reflect the pain of their past

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