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The Marginal Culture or the
Culture of Marginality in the
Cuban Visual Arts
José Clemente Martinez Gascon
Teacher, artist and art critic
Resident in Cuba
"The human spirit floats on the land where men lived, and we breathe it".
Jose Marti

A

lthough the concept of marginality
has various sociological approaches,
the marginal individuals and groups
continue acting and living in conditions of
survival, which force them to perform actions against the established codes and
standards. These actions are expressions of
countercultures, subaltern cultures or subcultures. They are the tangible expression of
dissatisfaction with expectations. The marginality was widely rejected by the bodies of
the high culture and its elite —specialists,
academics, and other professionals in the
institutional sphere— but it turned into
attractive and tolerated social manifestation

overnight, as it was demanded by the interest
and curiosity of foreign collectors, especially
European, with preferences for certain atypical cultural practices, genuine indigenous art
and or oddities by people who were disqualified as social subjects in the past. The alternative art spaces (underground) addresses
issues or topics that irreverently manifest the
dissatisfactions, divergences and deprivations of the subjects who inhabit the socalled urban peripheries. The peculiarity of
their practices is the artistic genuine expression without consent, approval or authorization by the mechanisms of the official culture.

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