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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the ways in which various groups appropriate public space for visual messaging in Havana, Cuba. Based on visual materials collected during fieldwork in Havana, the paper exposes urban space as a contradictory site with multiple linkages between politics, ideology, and identity.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the ways in which various groups, both top down and bottom up, occupy and use public space for visual messaging in Havana, Cuba. The cityscape of Havana entrenches a nexus that intertwines aesthetic practice, the appropriation of space, and formal and informal modes of communication. Based on visual materials collected during fieldwork in Havana between 2015 and 2020, the presentation particularly considers how revolutionary and counterrevolutionary visual statements convey consensus/dissensus viewpoints that seek to either impose status quo meaning or contest such views. The ways in which groups and individuals appropriate, claim, and reclaim shared space for their own purposes prompt important questions regarding individual and collective agency, quests for visibility, and spatial mobilities.

The paper’s focus on both official visual displays (billboards, posters, and roadside signs) and informal visual statements (street art, graffiti, and ad hoc exhibits) exposes urban space as a contradictory site with multiple linkages between politics, ideology, and identity. Particularly in contexts in which freedom of expression may not be self-evident, visuality provides a window into individual participation in public dialogue, penetrating discourses that might otherwise remain hidden or beyond reach. By situating the discussion in specific spatial locations within the city, the paper analyzes a range of place-based, practical ramifications as well as broader theoretical implications of visual-spatial maneuvering in Havana. Ultimately, the paper demonstrates that revolutionary and counterrevolutionary aesthetics reveal multiple un/intended consequences related to for quotidian power relations and knowledge production processes.