︎︎︎ 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 body, memory and neighbourhoods.
Immobility still seems to mark the left's attachment to Cuba and its revolution. The most widespread imaginaries of both froze half a century ago in a kind of museum of tropical socialism and utopia, while life continues to overflow with so much heat.
The Cuban revolution, as a form of political and sentimental folklore that is not easy to shake off, is a wall that makes Cuba's entry into our present difficult, and vice versa. The island's present takes the form of absent bodies, totalitarian drifts, exiles, stolen words, but also of 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 Carmenate* and Eddi Circa* to come together to undo. Far from the familiar epic of machos, they wanted to imagine a different revolution. In the process, they invented stories of heroines and dusted off genealogies of deer, which is the same as believing in other ways of entering Cuba. Crossing that complex and important place.
They wondered about the invisible lives of Cuban queers, dykes and bisexuals, their writings and 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 proposed to create a visual and audio counter-archive of these apparent absences, to question some devices of memory in public space and to enter that conflicted place with its own uncertainties, to write and sing the revolú, but in
a different way.
*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 Institut Valenciá d'Art Modern. He has curated exhibitions by artists such as Miguel Benlloch and Diego del Pozo, as well as
university projects related to archives and memory. He 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.