AIC's 53rd Annual Meeting

During World War II and the times of political and ethnic persecution preceding it, a part of the art world came together to protect artists at risk and rescue their work, as well as that of old masters, from burning on pyres or being trafficked by military regimes. Despite these coordinated efforts by democratic forces, many lives and heritage were lost. The recovery of lost or trafficked art remains at the center of the mission of many cultural institutions to this day. In 2024, as seventy percent of the world population lives under autocracies, and democracies erode worldwide every year, with censorship, systematic persecution and forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide as a consequence, the question arises: Should preservation professionals play an active role advocating for the protection, not only of the artworks, but of the endangered artists’ integrity as well? 

With this proposition in mind, we will present our experiences collaborating with Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, an artist imprisoned in Cuba since 2021 for his political activism, in documenting his creative processes, evacuating some of his artworks, and advocating for his release, as part of collective efforts from his close friends, supporters in the art world, and the international community.

Otero Alcantara, born in Havana in 1987, is a Cuban self-taught artist and political activist, better known for his performances and hunger strikes in defiance of the country’s Communist regime authorities. In 2018, he co founded the San Isidro Movement, to protest the imminent enactment of repressive cultural policies under Decree 349. From that moment, he was systematically persecuted by the state forces and regularly detained, until he was finally arrested in July 2021 after his attempt to participate in the unprecedentedly massive anti regime protests that took place across the country. Earlier that year, in April, the political police had broken into his studio and destroyed a group of artworks he was producing with the involvement of the San Isidro community, before sequestering him for several weeks in a hospital. 

Anamely Ramos, who was a member of the San Isidro Movement, has been interviewing Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara throughout the last five years, delving on his motives and techniques, his use of diverse media, from sculptures and drawings to performances, and his constant efforts to activate and involve communities in his work. She has also been documenting his production while in prison.

Salome Garcia had the opportunity to interview the artist days before he was imprisoned, regarding his recently destroyed series of paintings Caramelos sin saliva, with the intention to document the process of their conception and how the artist envisioned possible ways to rescue these artworks. 

Although most of these conversations have been published in different media, this is the first time they will be presented together with a focus on conservation.