STRAIGHT FROM CUBA: A WOMAN'S PERSPECTIVE Exhibition to Open This Spring at Lois Lambert Gallery

Last year's widely acclaimed "Straight from Cuba" exhibition at the Lois Lambert Gallery showcased three male Cuban artists. Beginning May 14th, and continuing through July 10th, the Gallery will present a follow-up exhibition including the works of six female Cuban artists titled "Straight from Cuba: A Woman's Perspective." This group exhibition features work by Alicia de la Campa Pak, Laura Carralero Morales, Belsy Cobiellas Cruz, Lisandra Isabel Garcia, and Adislen Reyes Pino.

Each artist's work reflects Cuba's current cultural and political concerns, social dynamics and gender issues. Female artists are challenging the meaning of "feminine", by exploring the stereotypical attributes so often applied to them.

ALICIA DE LA CAMPA PAK paints a dreamscape influenced by Cuban and Western art history. By creating characters, poses, and costumes derived from Western European art, Alicia creates her own aesthetic. Echoes of the depictions of everyday women in floral headdresses and elaborate decorative elements in paintings by Cuban artists Rene? Portocarrero and Servando Cabrera Moreno also find their way into Pak's compositions. Using her own body as a template, she paints mythological-like figures influenced by everyday activities of women in Havana. Pak describes the women in her paintings and drawings as: "my alter ego, living in my dreams, my inner world, symbols of life, beauty, knowledge ... ". In her painting "La Vendedora Ambulante" ("The Traveling Woman Vendor") she depicts a street vendor in a regal position as if sitting on a throne covered in flowers and butterflies. The fantasy is infused with the optimism that anything is possible for the everyday woman of Cuba. The paintings in this current exhibition are part of her series titled "Habaneras," a colloquial term that refers to women walking about their daily lives in Havana.

Alicia de la Campa is a Cuban painter, engraver, illustrator and art professor who resides in Havana. Alicia graduated from Havana ?s San Alejandro Art School, and she went on to earn an MBA in Visual Education at the Enrique Jose? Varona Higher Pedagogical Institute. Alicia is a member of the National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC.) She has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in Havana, New York, Chicago, South Korea, Mexico, Panama, Madrid and Slovakia. Her work is included at: The International Encyclopedia of Fantastic & Surrealistic & Symbolist & Visionary Artists, Germany 2009; "Cuba Arte: La mujer en el foco de la creacio?n arti?stica, desde el fin de la colonia hasta el presente" Germany 2010; and the International Catalogue of Modern Art 2012-2013, Cida, Italy.

LAURA CARRALERO MORALES is in love with architecture. Morales believes that when we visit a place for the first time our senses leave us with unique emotions that can't be experienced again. Immediately after an initial visit, Morales begins to paint in an effort to capture the feelings she experienced in that virgin moment. In her "Catedrales" series, Morales paints over the blueprints of Gothic cathedrals. The juxtaposition of painting and architecture highlights the relationship between the organic and the structural.

Laura Carralero Morales is a young artist from Cuba. In 2015, Morales earned a Masters of Fine Arts from the Instituto Superior de Artes. She has participated in several solo and group exhibitions in Havana. This is her first exhibition outside Cuba.

BELSY COBIELLAS CRUZ paintings are scenes that often include interactions from daily life as well as mythological characters. Often in her paintings she will use old colonial decorative elements to create the patterns that she paints. Cruz has intently developed a feminine aesthetic. Cruz paints with bright colors like violets or pinks and is inspired by domestic themes; daily life in Cuba, Cuban folk stories, her own dreams and the interactions between her children. She begins painting on the canvas directly with acrylic paints in ochre and sepia tones. Cruz uses a monotype technique in which she paints on the glass and presses it against the canvas, always leaving some of the raw canvas exposed in parts of the drawing. Due to the fast drying nature of acrylic, she has to move quickly over the canvas moving back and forth between drawing and painting.

Belsy Cobiellas Cruz comes from a family of artists and art professors. Her father is an artist. Cruz herself went to study at a Vocational School of the Arts at 11 years old. She graduated from the Academy of San Alejandro in Havana, Cuba with a degree in art focusing on painting. Cruz has had a long career as an exhibiting artist in Cuba and has participated in several exhibitions in Europe.

LISANDRA ISABEL GARCIA is a mixed media, installation artist and painter. The paintings in this exhibition are part of a series that takes from the tradition of using the female body as a representation of the sensual. The artist explores the contrast between past and present ideas of beauty. Garcia, a skilled draftsman, paints in a graphic style. Black line silhouettes depict women wearing basic underwear and lingerie. Her influences are European classics, such as, Tiziano, Velazquez, Ingres, Goya, and Boticelli. Lisandra compares the European ideologies of beauty to the ideologies she feels are forced on her today. She paints inside the underwear the details of paintings such as "The Birth of Venus" or "La Grande Odalisque."

Lisandra Isabel Garcia acquired her Masters in Fine Arts from the Higher Institute of Arts (ISA) in Havana, Cuba where she now permanently resides. Garcia's work has been featured in multiple exhibitions internationally, including an exhibition in the Freies Museum in Berlin, Germany.

ADISLEN REYES PINO draws her inspiration from the personal narrative. Pino's creative process stems from the idea that the personal angst of the individual often reflects the trepidations of the public realm. For this exhibition Adislen will be showing work from her ongoing series of drawings titled "Crisis." The concept behind this series began from Adislen's own existential crisis, which she feels could be read "as the crisis of an entire generation that has many questions, unrest, dissatisfactions and concerns similar to mine."

Instead of creating spectacular images of catastrophes to portray that anxiety, Pino opts to use small scale, simple and clean drawings that convey calmness. A calmness that Adislen feels communicates more explicitly the anxiety felt when one comes across those existential questions about the world today.

Adislen Reyes Pino was born in Havana in 1984. She graduated from the Higher Institute of Arts and the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts, where she is now working as a professor. Pino's work has been exhibited in several solo exhibitions in Havana, Cuba. Her work has been featured in the Taipei Fine Art Museum in China, The Art Museum of the Americas in Washington DC and the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in Costa Rica. In addition, Pino has participated in many themed group exhibitions internationally, dealing with issues of the Cuban avant-garde, gender identity and book art. In the United States, Pino has shown in California, Connecticut, New Jersey, Florida and New York.