IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 6 ENGLISH | Page 139

real progress in all areas of material and
spiritual life thwarted. These aspirations
were expressed in the words and spirit of
legal texts, but were not put into practice
in a hindered reality that has existed for
more than 400 years. We had to wait
until 1997 for some artists to approach
the subject as temporary cultivators and
others incorporate iconography of AfroCuban origin into their styles, through
the Queloides exhibits at Casa de África
and Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes
Visuales (CDAV). The curatorial camp
continues seeing proposals that articulate
thematically
novel
projects
on
“blackness,” but many artists assume a
tangential focus on it. Others create on
the subject within only one area of their
production; their approaches often
reflect an intertextual relationship with
certain, key pieces. This variety of
interpretations—which
have
been
transmitted irregularly since their
inception—is a definitive, graphic
testament to the fact that the Diaspora
and its descendants have manifested
different or distorted versions of the sex
roles, gender, and life of the Orishas that
arrived in America. Access to writing
was the privative patrimony of men; it
was they who were charged with

protecting the meanings of the symbols,
and also of genders. These revealed the
most sacred, religious relics; the
consciousn W72