Socialism with Bling: Aspiration, Decency, and Exclusivity in Contemporary Cuba

Abstract

This article engages a pervasive discourse on decency in twenty-first-century social mores and state prohibitions by examining artists’ work (2016–2019) that speaks to how material culture and aesthetic judgment feed into the aesthetic hegemony of the Cuban state. Attention is paid to three cases that unravel a national and international staging of a universal “decent” Cuban culture in the post-Obama era: (1) the 2017 intervention Where is Mella? by “amateur” artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who called attention to the Cuban military’s commercial alliance with Kempinksi, the Swiss/German hotel group, critiquing Cuba’s new landscape of luxury; (2) Pluto (2016), video art by Geandy Pavón that alludes to a chain of embezzlements and substitutions; and (3) the performances of two “amateur” musicians: Chocolate MC, who, though popular, is also deemed repulsive on both sides of the Florida Straits, and Cimafunk, celebrated as a cultural ambassador. A contemplation on “excess” – a 5-star hotel, junk jewellery, or bling bling – allows for questions of who the Cuban state recognises as an artist, how artists appropriate and expropriate ideas of luxury and refinement, and whether these substitutions can sufficiently erode colonial legacies that continue to contain those subjectivities perceived as excessive.