by Federica Bueti for Ocula
(…) One of the highlights of Detrás del Muro (Behind the Wall), a project of public interventions staged on the beautiful sea boulevard of El Malecón, is the durational performance by Cuban artist Carlos Martiel, titled La sangre de Caín (Caín’s blood). Martiel has developed a distinct performative language made of disarmingly simple, yet particularly potent gestures that often test the limits of physical endurance under oft-extreme conditions. For his performative intervention for the Havana Biennial, Martiel has created a circular structure made of metal and stretched threads dyed with the blood of some of the artists involved in the protest against the Decree 349, who, in an act of solidarity, the artist has invited to contribute to his work. Dressed in white, Martiel stands inside this prison without walls, facing the sea, under a burning sun, becoming an object of contemplation, but also a subject of endurance and resistance. Who is the traitor? The artists whose dissent is seen by the government as a sign of betrayal, or the government itself, whose values of revolutionary freedom, equality, and justice contradict their repressive, and rather paternalistic, behaviours? Martiel’s evocative performance opens a space for contemplation, amid the intense noise and the chaos that seems to have taken hold of the country as it moves toward an unknown future. As if to suggest that, at this important historical juncture, it is time to take a moment before turning (…)
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