Trinidad off-Screen | una visión desconicida
dialogue between poetry and photographY
Sonetos a Trinidad | Juan Lázaro Besada
Translation in French Patrick Bouchez
This project came from an encounter. Between two individuals, two cultures, two visions, two writing styles.
Two internal and distinct universes that yet merge in the same discourse.
Encounter between words that cannot get out of a country, and images that cannot get in.
I met the poet and writer Juan Lázaro Besada by chance, in a small alley in Trinidad, Cuba. From this unexpected encounter came the exciting - yet abstract - idea to organize a common exhibition mixing poetry and photography that would be presented in both Cuba and France.
This could just have been an utopian project. However, seven months after I left Cuba, we finally exchanged our respective works, and came to realize that they carried a similar discourse, a common vision of Cuba and Trinidad, as it is and as we perceive it, in the brutal reality of its humanity. An off-screen vision, expressed beyond words and images, beyond what is visible and apparent, in the unseizable and the perceivable. And definitely, a vision opposite from the folkloric and stereotyped image generated by national propaganda and the tourism industry.
With a common desire to share and go beyond prohibitions and conventions, the project finally emerged. The exhibition gives voice to what is concealed, outside of Cuba, and reveals what should not be seen, in Cuba.
Designed separately in Trinidad and Paris, with the same elements (10 poems and 24 photographs), this “double” exhibition is the result of a dialogue between poetry and photography, generations and life contexts, visions and feelings, that are at the same time distinct, common and complementary. An off-screen dialogue.
VISIT the EXHIBITIOn
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Note: the poems have been translated in French for the exhibition.
The English version will be available soon.
