Join Aldeide Delgado, curator of The Abyss of the Ocean, with performer and researcher Yesenia Selier and visual artists Gertrudis Rivalta and Marta María Pérez Bravo for a reading workshop about the publication Afrocubanas: History, Thought, and Cultural Practices edited by historian Daisy Rubiera Castillo and playwright and theater critic Inés María Martiatu Terry. This book interrogates the experiences of Black women in the historical landscape of the Cuban nation. These essays share a collective interest in dismantling the negative stereotypes about Black women while reflecting a legacy of thought and resistance. 

This reading workshop is a space for thinking and learning together. If you have any access requirements, please email us in advance and we will do our best to accommodate them.

All texts will be read together in the group, you don’t need to read them in advance. The workshop will take place in Spanish with simultaneous translation in English.

Capacity is limited. RSVP is required. 

Marta María Pérez Bravo (b. 1959, Havana) is a Mexican-based artist whose work in photography and video explores Spiritism, Christianism, and African-Cuban religions of Santería and Palo Monte from the lens of gender. Her art engages with the themes of ritual, motherhood, and femininity, expressed by visual compositions where her body is portraited along with personally and ritually meaningful objects. She is considered one of the pioneers of contemporary Cuban photography.

Pérez Bravo graduated from the National School of Arts “San Alejandro” (1979), and from the Higher Arts Institute (1984), both in Havana. Although she studied painting, her practice on photography has defined her creative career since the mid-1980s. She has received numerous recognitions such as the Guggenheim Fellowship (1998) and Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) lifetime Achievement Award (2012). Her work has been included in many international exhibitions and biennials, such as Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, the Havana Biennial, 21st Bienal de São Paulo in Brazil, 5th Istanbul Biennial, and the Kwangju Biennale in South Korea. Her photographs are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana; Pori Art Museum, Finland; Ludwig Forum, Aachen, Germany; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; and Museo Español e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo, Badajoz, Spain; among other preeminent institutions.

Photo Credits: Courtesy of the artist

Gertrudis Rivalta (b. 1971, Santa Clara) is a multi-disciplinary artist, living between Cuba and Spain, whose trajectory includes drawing, sculpture, painting, photography, video, and performance. A graduate of the Higher Art Institute in Havana in 1996, Rivalta has exhibited her work in some of the most distinguished Cuban art galleries and museums, such as Centro Wifredo Lam, Fototeca of Cuba, National Museum of Fine Arts, Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales, as well as in international spaces such as Museo de Arte de Ponce, Cultural Center of the Philippines, Ibero-American Museum of Contemporary Art, Track 16 

Yesenia Fernandez-Selier is a Cuban born performer and researcher. She is currently a Media, Culture and Communication PhD Student at New York University-Steinhardt. Yesenia is the recipient of fellowships from CLACSO, CUNY Caribbean Exchange Program, Cuban Heritage Collection and the organization “Save Latin America”. Her work on Afro Cuban culture, encompassing dance, music and race identity has been published in Cuba, United States and Brazil. She produced the theater play “ Women Orishas” for Miami Cuban Museum (2013) and the show “Cuba en Clave” for the New York Cuban Cultural Center (2014). She was featured dancing Yemaya in Jazz at Lincoln Center 2014 opening with Wynton Marsalis, Chucho Valdes and Pedrito Martinez.

Aldeide Delgado, a Cuban-born, Miami-based independent Latinx art historian and curator, is the founder & director of Women Photographers International Archive (WOPHA). Delgado studies, publishes on, and curates from feminist and decolonial perspectives on crucial topics of the history of photography and abstraction within Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx contexts. Delgado is the Guest Curator of CCCADI’s digital exhibition The Abyss of the Ocean: Cuban Women Photographers, Migrations, and the Question of Rac