Cuban Dissident Artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara Invites Havana Biennial Attendees to Visit Him in Prison

Cuban dissident artist and activist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who is currently jailed in Havana, has invited attendees of the upcoming Havana Biennial to visit him in prison as a part of an art project, the Art Newspaper reported Monday.

Otero Alcántara has been held in Guanajay, a maximum-security penitentiary south of the Cuban capital, since 2021.

“To the artists, theorists, collectors and art lovers who will visit the 2024 biennial, I invite you to see my work and become part of it,” he told the Art Newspaper. “It’s called Proof of Life. One special person will be chosen to visit me in prison and spend one or two hours with me in conversation about art and other things.

“The biennial began as an opportunity for artists from the periphery, and those that have been displaced. Since I can’t go to the event, why not bring [the Havana Biennial] to the artist?”

Otero Alcántara was one of hundreds of Cubans arrested during anti-government protests in 2021 over the island’s falling standard of life and crackdown on free expression. He was sentenced in June 2022 to five years in prison, a decision condemned at the time by Amnesty International as “emblematic” of how Cuba’s current regime “uses the judicial system to criminalize critical voices.”

A co-founder of the San Isidro freedom movement, Otero Alcántara was vocally against Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s constriction on artistic expression. While imprisoned in Guanajay, he has led several hunger strikes in support of the Cuban artists, activists, and journalists who have reportedly been jailed, prosecuted, or forced into exile by Díaz-Canel’s administration.

Through his Twitter account, Otero Alcántara has also broadcast the brutal conditions he and his fellow prisoners endure in Guanajay, including prolonged solitary confinement and inadequate food and medical attention.

“The soundscape here is always the same,” he told the Miami Herald in 2023. “All you hear is the murmur of death slowly approaching … All we did was demand the right to choose our political future and to speak our mind.”

The 15th Havana Biennial is organized by the Wifredo Lam Contemporary Arts Centre in Havana and runs from November 15 through February 28. The theme is “shared horizons,” centered on “seeking those points of connection, those common areas that allow us to move forward together toward a more equitable and sustainable future,” per the biennial.