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Cuban, American Cultures Collide on Canvas |
| By
Megan Mangano |
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Oct 3, 2003 |
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| �One Trick Pony� by Arturo Rodriquez |
In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, the Multicultural Student Center is displaying the artwork of Arturo Rodriguez, UT assistant professor of art.
Rodriguez describes his works as “rooted in my experiences as someone who finds it difficult to identify with a cultural group.” Born in Cuba, he and his mother left for America during the Mariel boatlift in 1980. He doesn’t identify himself as Cuban or as an American. “‘American’ is a term that I feel does not fit me, even though I have been living in this country for over 20 years. I also don’t feel comfortable with the ‘Cuban’ label either because my memories of the island are those of a young boy,” Rodriguez said.
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| �The Lonesome West� by Arturo Rodriguez |
In his more recent works, he questions the idea of being in exile. “I like to take images from paintings that one might find on the walls of an ‘average American home’ and combine them with some of my earliest visual memories about America: cartoons,” Rodriguez explained. For him, this is a way of working Cuban culture into American society. “My culture has historically undergone a process of appropriation connected with a long tradition of attempts to integrate imported influences with the surrounding reality,” he said.
His aim is to morph the two inherent compositional problems into a symbiotic whole. Scarcity and imported imagery are part of his motivations for the works. “The comical nature of my recent works is not only a device to attract the viewer, but also a reminder of what a wonderfully absurd place the world can be,” Rodriguez said. “For me, this way of working constitutes an accurate metaphor for Cuban aesthetics.”
The exhibit is open Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Oct. 15.
For more information on the free, public exhibit, call the Multicultural Student Center at 419.530.2261.
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