HAVANA, Jan. 27 (Xinhua) -- As an artistic medium, ceramic in Cuba has a relatively short history of some 70 years. But today, Cuba's ceramic artists are seeking their rightful place among the Caribbean nation's visual arts.
As part of that trend, Havana's Ibero-American Cultural Center is hosting a Ceramic Biennial that features 43 works by 39 artists, including sculptures, installations and other innovative projects.
"The event helps promote ceramic artists by supporting their visual arts," curator Surislay Reyes, who also heads the National Museum of Contemporary Cuban Artistic Ceramics, told Xinhua.
Ceramic artists "seek to express the same notions about the social, economic, cultural, local and international situation as artists working in other mediums," said Reyes.
Ceramic artist Martha Jimenez's work "Risk" won the biennial's Creation Grant in 2016 from the National Arts Council.
"Risk" is an installation project of ceramics and metal which deals with the concept of the circus. All the characters are women in different situations that are not only associated with circus life, but also with daily life in Cuba and Latin America.
Jimenez, a graduate of art history at the University of Havana, said the history of Cuban ceramics began in 1950 with the opening of a workshop in the town of Santiago de las Vegas, on the outskirts of Havana.
Doctor and ceramist Juan Miguel Rodriguez de la Cruz, owner of the workshop, invited up and coming Cuban artists to decorate vessels and plates, starting the first ceramic artistic movement on the island.
Among them "were the best Cuban artists, such as Wifredo Lam, Rene Portocarrero, Mariano Rodriguez and Amelia Pelaez, all of whom had a relevant career later in painting," said Reyes.
The workshop continued until the 1990s, inspiring similar initiatives in other cities, such as Santiago de Cuba, Camaguey, and the beach resort of Varadero.
Today, Cuban artists think of ceramics "as a more expressive mode within the great panorama of the Cuban visual arts," said Reyes, adding that "an event such as the Ceramic Biennial contributes a lot to its development."
