︎︎︎ COACHMAN, TO THE PALACE!
may to october 2025
For this programme, curator Alejandro Simón* invited two artists, Aurora Carmenate* and Eddi Circa*, to work on the curatorial theme of the cycle. Their proposal, entitled ‘Cochero, ¡a palacio!’ (Coachman, to the palace!), was developed in dialogue with the theme of the dissident body and its memory in Cuba.
Immobility seems to continue to mark the left's attachment to Cuba and its revolution. The most widely disseminated images of both were frozen half a century ago in a kind of museum of tropical socialism and utopia, while life continues to overflow with such intensity.
The Cuban revolution as a form of political and sentimental folklore that is not easy to renounce is a wall that hinders Cuba's entry into our present and vice versa. The island's present is embodied in absent bodies, totalitarian drifts, exiles, stolen words, but also in a radical hope and vitality that are reinvented here outside, in everyday gestures, music, phrases and relaxed ways of being in the world. This project began with a conversation in which Alejandro Simón invited Aurora and Eddi to meet to undo. Far from the familiar epic of machismo, they wanted to imagine a different revolution. In the process, they invented stories of heroines and dusted off genealogies of deer, which is equivalent to believing in other ways of entering Cuba. Crossing that complex and important place.
The artists wondered about the invisible lives of Cuban queers, lesbians and bisexuals, their writings and their sounds. About the queens of Havana's nightlife, of the party that survives to this day despite any authoritarianism thanks to its working-class self-confidence. It is no coincidence that the first image censored by the Cuban Revolution was that of black bodies dancing in clubs and bars on Mariano beach and in the port. Nor is it a coincidence that Celia Cruz never returned to Cuba or that little is known about the history of María Teresa Vera, a black lesbian troubadour from Santiago, the granddaughter of slaves, who sang street songs and boleros, with plenty of rum and joy. This project set out to create a visual and audio counter-archive of these apparent absences, to question some devices of memory in the public space and to enter that conflictive place with its own uncertainties, in order to write and sing the revolú, but in a different way. through themes such as ideology, queerness, friendship, epistemology and magic.
︎︎︎Text about the process.
Field notebook, Coachman, to the palace!
Aurora Carmenate and Eddi Circa, October 2025
Alejandro Simón put us in touch with a mission. To build a bridge instead of raising a wall. To open a dialogue between Cuban exiles and the Spanish left. Instead of talking to us from the rigidity of archetypal thoughts about what the left is, the Cuban socialist revolution, the capitalist system and the communist government, to talk to us from a softer perspective. Because in softness, we thought, more courageous questions could arise. And not necessarily—we weren't looking for them—closed answers. So, Novel Socialism, or Coachman, to the Palace! has been, essentially, a process of dialogue between an exiled Cuban researcher and a Spanish singer, both within the thinking and doing of the left. This process of dialogue has lasted eleven months.
When we first wrote to each other, the subject matter was harsh, acidic and uncomfortable, but the tone was tender, sweet and loving. Thus we began our conversation about the repression exercised by the Cuban dictatorship over the people, in terms of literary and artistic censorship, and specifically, over queers.
The research consisted first of endless conversations to, as Bad Gyal says, gradually soften us up. Because Aurora found human resistance in Eddi. Resistance and suspicion of bringing down the global icon of the socialist model in one fell swoop. The Cuba of communist folklore, the Cuba that every Marxist-Leninist has once looked at with love. So we began to talk. To open doors and windows. To think together about a possible future where wealth is redistributed, but where the old trail of power of the dominant and the dominated is not reproduced. Little by little, Aurora guided a journey through the literary, musical and audiovisual archives, leading the authentic shift to the soft.
We then began to chisel out the form we wanted for this research: we would not engage in ideological debates, we would take a journey into the literature and music of the margins of the dictatorship. We would choose high Cuban homosexual literature and offer it to anyone who wanted to soften up. To devise new ways of relating to Cuba, of imagining the country we need. We set about undoing some fixed images, a political and sentimental folklore sown and watered throughout the world since 1959, and we gathered what remained outside the dictatorship, which is not everything else: an exuberance of lives, writings, sounds... which, with its sibilant language, never quite reveals its secrets.
Aurora told Eddi a story that no one has yet been able to pin down or confirm. Some say it happened in Havana, during the so-called ‘night of the three Ps’ (1961). P for prostitute, p for pimp, p for bird. The Cuban writer Virgilio Piñera was among those who were forcibly taken away that night along with other queers who were allegedly attacking revolutionary morality. They say that from one of the trucks bound for prison, transvestites were heard shouting: ‘Coachman... to the Palace!’. I imagine the policeman hiding his unease at what that mocking cry opened up right there and then with those gestures. He surely couldn't name it, but if he could have, he would have had to call it poetry.
After reading many texts, we selected our favourites: Virgilio Piñera, Severo Sarduy, Reinaldo Arenas, Pedro Marquéz de Armas. Lydia Cabrera, José Lezama Lima, Eliseo Diego, Jamila Medina Ríos, Larry J. González, Legna Rodríguez, and Ena Lucía Portela. Similarly, the soundscape we presented towards the end of the exhibition contained pieces by Maria Teresa Vera and Rafael Zerqueira, La Lupe, Celia Cruz and La Sonora Matancera, Bola de Nieve, Estrellas de Chocolate, Potato y Totico, Juanito Valderrama and Antonio Peana, Celeste Mendoza, Celina y Reutilio, Cachao y Peruchín, Danay Suárez, La Goony Chonga, and Chocolate MC.
All these texts were brought together in a publication that has seen the light of day thanks to the impeccable work of Ana Olmedo, who laid out the texts, designed the front and back covers and handcrafted no less than twenty copies. We will not forget the editorial laboratory we set up in her own home, in an atmosphere of madness and enthusiasm.
In addition to the texts and bibliography, the book contains two texts by Eddi Circa and Aurora Carmenate as a prologue explaining the reasons behind this book. The triggers, the questions that sparked the encounter, provoked and facilitated by the bold vision of Alejandro Simón.
Final publication:
︎︎︎ Public opening “COCHERO,¡A PALACIO!”
18 October 2025
The residency closed and opened to the public with the presentation of the final publication, handcrafted by designer Ana Olmedo. The artists recounted their process and gave a series of revised readings accompanied by videos and songs performed by Eddie Circa. As is customary at Espacio de Todo, the opening was accompanied by a meal prepared by the residents and those who wanted to help with the preparation, on this occasion, a Cuban Ajiaco.
*You can see the recipe prepared by the residents for the opening of the process in ︎︎︎Recipes
*Alejandro Simón (ESP) is a researcher, professor of Fine Arts at the University of Salamanca and artist. His work has focused on developing a critical perspective from artistic practice through images. He holds a PhD from the Complutense University of Madrid and has worked for institutions such as the Reina Sofía National Art Museum, the Dos de Mayo Art Centre and the Valencian Institute of Modern Art. He has curated exhibitions by artists such as Miguel Benlloch and Diego del Pozo, as well as university projects related to archives and memory. She has published with publishers such as Bellaterrra and Brumar.
*Aurora Carmenate. Cuban researcher and curator. She has edited the book of essays Todas las vidas by Tamara Díaz Bringas (consonni, 2024), which covers three decades of close criticism of artistic practices, networks and affection in Central America, Cuba and Spain. She is currently researching forms of migrant imagination as part of her research residency at the Reina Sofía Museum. Eddi Circa. Composer, producer and guitarist born in Madrid. She has a PhD in physics from the University of Alcalá, which coexists with her strong inclination towards literature and philosophy. Her songs are a journey through themes such as ideology, queerness, friendship, epistemology and magic.