Washington College’s Kohl Gallery will launch “Drafting Dissent: The Use of Drawings in Cuba’s Recent Activist Scene” with an opening reception on Thursday, February 6, 2025, from 5-6:30 p.m., preceded by a curatorial tour led by scholar Maria de Lourdes Mariño Fernandez from 4-5 p.m. The exhibition, showcasing powerful works by Cuban artists/activists Camila R. Lobón, Raychel Carrión, and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, explores how drawing has become a vital tool in expressing dissent and driving political discourse within Cuba’s evolving cultural landscape. “Drafting Dissent” will be on view from February 6 through March 8, 2025, at the Kohl Gallery, Gibson Center for the Arts, Washington College, located at 300 Washington Avenue, Chestertown, MD 21620. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 2-5 p.m., with extended hours on Wednesdays until 6 p.m.
Camila R. Lobón was a founder of INSTAR (Institute of Artivism Hanna Arendt), and is a central member of 27N, the activist group that staged the first public manifestation against political persecution led by artists and intellectuals since 1959.
Raychel Carrión, also a member of 27N and who resides in Spain, became an important voice in support of this movement through social media by sharing drawings where he narrates the current conflicts.
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, currently serving a five-year prison sentence in Cuba for his performative activism and participation in mass demonstrations, is a central figure of the cultural shift that characterizes contemporary Cuban art. Even from prison, Alcántara continues to be a fundamental force of the political and cultural struggle in the country.
Through these artists’ exhibited drawings, Drafting Dissent represents the practice of conceptual meditation on the reality of political persecution, isolation, and overwhelming despair on the island.
About the Artists:
Camila Ramírez Lobón
Camila Ramírez Lobón
Camila Ramírez Lobón was born in Camagüey, Cuba in 1995. Her practice focuses on the narration and illustration of a social and political imaginary that subverts the Cuban totalitarian narrative through individual memory. Graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte, La Habana in 2019, she worked as coordinator of the Hannah Arendt Activism Institute (INSTAR), founded by artist Tania Bruguera in 2015. Lobón is a columnist for the independent Cuban magazine Hypermedia where her drawings are regularly published. Her work has been exhibited in Havana, Montreal, Buenos Aires, Berlin and Prague. Lobón has been an active member of many of the initiatives that have starred in recent years in the claim for freedom of expression and civic and political rights in Cuba, such as the 27N group and the San Isidro Movement.
Raychel Carrión
Raychel Carrión is a visual artist born in Havana, Cuba in 1978. Carrión graduated in 2011 from the Institute of Superior Arts (ISA) in Havana, Cuba (ISA). He also studied at Catedra Arte de Conducta from 2006-2008, Tania Bruguera’s workshop on behavioral and political art. Carrión’s work deconstructs cultural perceptions based on stereotyped ideologies. His work questions the normalization of manipulated historiography and the role played by the cult to a leader. The approach focuses on the “politicization of the affective” as a generator of ideological unity. As a result of it, Carrión explores the detriment of personal singularity and the repression of individual freedoms. Raychel Carrión’s drawings have been exhibited in Germany, Spain, France, Austria, and the USA.
Raychel Carrión
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara:
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is a Cuban artist and human rights defender whose performances are critical of the conditions many Cubans face. Alcántara leads the San Isidro Movement – an artists’ collective that promotes freedom of expression and cultural rights. He is a co-founder of the Museum of Dissidence, a website and public art project reclaiming and celebrating dissent. Alcántara uses art and culture to contest the ongoing violations of freedom of expression by the Cuban government. In his early work, he created sculptures of human forms, animals, and characters from comic books using salvaged materials. He has had his work confiscated and has been forcibly detained multiple times. His ongoing detention has drawn protests and statements of solidarity from international artists who support his unwavering fight for the freedom of cultural expression in Cuba. The drawings presented in this exhibition were created during his current imprisonment.
About the Curator
María de Lourdes Mariño Fernandez
María de Lourdes Mariño Fernandez is an independent researcher and curator currently a Ph.D. candidate at Temple University, where she specializes in Modern and Contemporary Art from Latin America and the Caribbean, including its diaspora. Her scholarship relies on theories of postcoloniality and decoloniality as conceptual frameworks to unravel the region’s race, class, gender, political, and economic power relationships as presented through the history of art.
Mariño’s research interest centers on the history of Cuban art from 1980 to the present, focusing on the history of performance and video art. She interrogates the role of politics in the production and promotion of Cuban art and its recent developments into diverse diasporic communities. Her most recent essay, “Decolonizing La Revolución: Cuban Artistic Practice in a Liminal Space” was published in, The Routledge Companion to Decolonizing Art History, 2024. Mariño is also the Inaugural Audrey Flack Short-Term Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) and National Portrait Gallery (NPG) 2024-2025.
About Kohl Gallery
Kohl Gallery fosters the study and understanding of art through a diverse range of exhibitions and public programs. Embracing its liberal arts context, Kohl Gallery presents fresh perspectives on historical and contemporary art and promotes interdisciplinary conversations about historical, social, and cultural issues of significance to Washington College, Chestertown, and beyond.
Kohl Gallery organizes diverse programming throughout the academic year. With each exhibit, the gallery hosts a combination of artist talks, public receptions, and scholarly presentations. Kohl Gallery also partners regularly with Washington College classes and groups from the Chestertown community to create unique, interdisciplinary opportunities for engagement with the works on view.
About Washington College here www.washcoll.edu.
Kohl Galley is fully accessible and open to the public Tuesday – Saturday 2pm – 5pm, Wednesdays 2pm – 6pm and by appointment. Drafting Dissent has been initiated through the invitation of Benjamin Tilghman, Associate Professor of Art History at Washington College to curator Maria de Lourdes Mariño Fernandez. For more information or to contact the gallery please visit www.washcoll.edu/about/campus/kohl-gallery/index.php
Lead image by Raychel Carrión
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