New Digital Exhibition Launched To Confront Racist & Colonial Stereotypes Through the Lenses of Five Cuban Women Photographers

The abyss of the ocean launched on March 21st in commemoration of Women’s History Month.

New York, NY – The Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute’s latest digital exhibition, The Abyss of the Ocean: Cuban Women Photographers, Migrations, and the Question of Race, is currently available for viewing and will offer free virtual programs to the general public featuring the artists, curators and special guest speakers beginning in April and running through June 2022. As part of the exhibition, CCCADI will also release an education guide in April that will allow educators and families with young children to explore the work of the five Cuban women photographers featured in the exhibition and the themes their photographs examine.

The Abyss of the Ocean: Cuban Women Photographers, Migrations, and the Question of Race, guest curated by Aldeide Delgado focuses on identity and resistance. The exhibition reveals the experiences and strategies of survival of María Magdalena Campos-Pons - When I am not here, estoy allá, Coco Fusco - Paquita y Chata Se Arrebatan, Marta María Pérez Bravo - No son mios, Gertrudis Rivalta - I (Yo), and Juana Valdés - Imperial China within the matrix of Latinx Art. Through their work, these artists challenge the concept of Latinidad and its relationship to Blackness in the modern/colonial project.

“Inspired by postcolonial Caribbean thought, [this] feminist archipelagic perspective centers racialized women’s experiences by foregrounding the aftermath of the abyss (of the slave ship, of the depths of the sea, and of the unknown),” said Aldeide Delgado, CCCADI Guest Curator.

CCCADI’s Curator-at-Large Grace Aneiza Ali invited Delgado, a notable curator and scholar of Cuban photography and founder of Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA), to serve as guest curator as part of the CCCADI’s mission to provide platforms for curators of color committed to the artistic and cultural production of the Afro-Caribbean and its Diaspora. CCCADI has been dedicated to stimulating discussions about identity, culture and race within the global African Diaspora throughout its 45 years. Within the current societal climate, racial and cultural erasure, sexualization, and objectification run rampant, serving as a reminder that there continues to be a need to explore the complexity of identity and the ramifications of the historical simplification of it.

“These works nudge us to think about movement and migration as we consider the impact of displacement and erasure of the original inhabitants and the absolute affront in the stripping of a people’s culture and land resulting in the appropriation by the “other,” said Melody Capote, CCCADI Executive Director.

This exhibition, including information about the featured artists and curator, the CCCADI executive director statement and the schedule of virtual programs, can be viewed by visiting TheAbyssoftheOcean.digital

The Abyss of the Ocean has been made possible with support from the Altman Foundation,

Ford Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, and Open Society Foundations.