Sweet Dreams - seventh Havana Biennial exhibition, Cuba

Today, certain Cuban artists enjoy an unprecedented liberty to travel, but for the remainder, the Biennial brought the world to Havana. Leandro Erlich and Judi Werthein of Argentina invited visitors to pose for Polaroids against a photomural of a ski chalet, on a set equipped with skis and covered with artificial snow. Their installation was generally crowded with uniformed teenage soldiers posing with smiling young women. Members of the architectural firm 3-RW transplanted their native Norway to tropical climes by inserting mural-sized photographs of a Scandinavian living room into a cafe adjacent to the Centro Wifredo Lam; they also knit sweaters onto the trunks of the palms that surrounded the eatery.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, a Canada-based Mexican artist, gave the Biennial its most truly interactive exhibit: a series of small LED screens attached to posts in the Centro that displayed text typed by visitors on a nearby keyboard (the results were subsequently posted at www.lozanohemmer.com). The sentiments ranged from concern over the fate of the planet to ruminations on the consequences of being gay in Cuba.

The Centro was also host to a video program curated by Euridice Arratia, the highlight of which was Ballad of Bad Orpheus by U.S. artist Guy Richards Smit. A witty homage to Rainer Fassbinder's film Querelle, the ballad recounts, with all the overwrought bathos of a rock opera, the sad fate of a sailor who can't control his evil nature.

Elsewhere in Havana

Several commendable exhibitions were held in conjunction with the Biennial. The Convent San Francisco was host to a group show of contemporary painters of religious subjects, many realized with a sensuous and magical quality, as well as a strong survey of postrevolutionary Cuban cinema posters. The Museo y Taller de Ceramica displayed the work of 15 Cuban ceramists working in a variety of styles. Drawings and paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat were featured at the Casa de las Americas and the Museo del Ron, and a small but beguiling retrospective of Helio Oiticica was presented at the Centre Provincial de Artes Plasticas y Diseno. A number of the artist's conceptual projects from the '60s and '70s were re-created for the Biennial, including one that had participants digging in dirt for buried treasure.

Alexis Leyva Machado, who goes by the name Kcho, was not officially included in the Biennial but was among many Cuban artists who attracted attention in concurrent exhibitions. He is known in the U.S. for his sculptures based on the cobbled-together rafts that carry so many Cubans to the shores of Florida--or to their deaths at sea. In the clean-swept space of a convent, he created a roughly made wooden pier set in the midst of empty glass bottles made to hold medicines and alcohol. The entire structure seemed ready to collapse into a sea of glass shards and splinters.

Orestes Grediaga, a Canadian of Spanish ancestry, arrived in Havana, invited, he said, by the curators but somehow overlooked; he was not assigned an exhibition space and was not included on the official map or in the catalogue. With considerable energy, he transformed a space in the Taller Escuela de Fundicion Artistica, a sculpture studio just off the Plaza Vieja. Assisted by local artisans, he built El Pozo (The Well), a darkened steel-frame room with a polished stainless-steel floor that mirrored an abstract, seemingly three-dimensional video playing overhead. Beautiful in a trippy sort of way, this animated space was a hidden sensual paradise.