Covert Planning
(2018)
Produced in Cuba and Spain
Framed drawings and printed material, variable dimentions
‘Covert Planning’ is a visual guid of how the artist’s family survived the
years of aftershocks in Cuba following the collapse of the Soviet Union, called
‘Período especial’. Everyone had to
become resourceful overnight and more
than offering insight to a single family’s
operations, ‘Covert Planning’ is a depiction
of a system of logic that all Cubans had to
develop in order to survive. Several years
later, over countless phone conversations
with Melis’s grandmother, Ms Marta Teste,
the mastermind behind all ‘operations’ and
now a dissident living in Miami, he draws
out strategies from the past until the
present. Some examples include breeding
Siamese cats in Havana and trafficking
them to Miami, earning money for home
renovations by renting out rooms to
prostitutes and meanwhile hosting Afghan
refugees to help with the construction,
and even using young pioneers as a
diversion to deliver beef hidden inside
their school back-packs. Albeit surreal
and bordering on illegal, these mini
enterprises perfectly translated to reality
and managed to sustain the family through
the most difficult times in Cuba’s history.
These silent and secret acts of protest are
noted and mapped out in six categories:
Resource Management, Trafficking,
Distribution, Workforce, Importation and Ideology. Altogether, they outlin the various stages of a covert economic
and distribution system in the 90s and
furthermore its effects on the ideology of
the family today.
Photo Credits: Roberto Ruiz
© Adn Galeria, 2018
