My Own Past
Afrodescendant Contributions to Cuban Art

A revisionist history of Cuban art, grounded in the country's African and Afrodescendant communities.

Alejandro de la Fuente (Author), Cary Aileen García Yero (Author)

9781009586467, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 18 September 2025

304 pages
26 x 18.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.96 kg

'Alejandro de La Fuente and Cary Aileen García Yero's ambitious work constitutes a monumental effort to understand Afro-Cuban contributions to Cuban art. This work explores the key questions of what constitutes Afro-Cuban art, why it is significant, and how it has developed over time. It challenges the traditional framing of people of African descent solely through the lenses of resistance, economic conditions, and racism. Instead, the book highlights Afro-Cuban individuals as active agents of change in the arts. It provides a roadmap linking their transformative impact to various African traditions and ideological needs.' Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz, Tanner-Opperman Chair of African Art History in Honor of Roy Sieber, Indiana University

In late eighteenth-century Havana, residents frequently referred to the existence of large communities of negros and pardos as 'officers in the trade of painter' and the authors of 'exquisite works.' But who are these artists, and where can we find their works? What sort of works did they produce? Where were they trained, and how did they master their crafts with such perfection? By centering the artistic production and social worlds of artists of African descent in Cuba since the colonial period, this revisionist history of Cuban art provides compelling answers to these questions. Carefully researched and cogently argued, the book explores the gendered racial biases that have informed the constitution of the Cuban art canon; exposes how the ideologues of the slave owning planter class institutionalized the association between 'fine arts' and key attributes of whiteness; and examines how this association continues to shape art historical narratives in Cuba.

Preface
Part I. Artists of African Descent and Cuban Art through the 1930s: 1. Their primorosas obras? Art and Whiteness in colonial Cuba
2. Afrodescendant artists and citizenship: the twentieth century
3. Conclusion to Part I
Part II. The Art of Afro-Cubans since the 1930s: Statements on the Social Condition and Cultural Heritage: 4. Reimagining Afrodescendant art from the Vanguardia and the Academy
5. Against anti-Black racism
6. Conclusion to Part II
Epilogue: the Afro-Latin American context
Afro-Cuban artists directory
Index.

Subject Areas: History of the Americas [HBJK]