Paper short abstract:

Starting from the artwork of two young female artists from Cuba and Nicaragua interested in ecology, schizophrenia and fable, I reflect on the potential of incorporating disaster, looking to the side rather than forward as strategies to think about futures in repressive contexts.

Paper long abstract:

The fear, the wariness, the waiting, works in response to trauma have been on the Nicaraguan and Cuban art scene for decades. Revolutions in both countries have been bolstered by histories of terror. What do we artist-heirs of this terror do through our work in the face of totalizing discourses? Here I am interested in addressing two works that aim to relocate narrations, feelings, and concepts: Mary y los hombres lagartos (Mary and the Lizard Men) by Cuban artist Camila Lobón and Piedra dulce (Sweet Stone) by Nicaraguan artist Darling López. Two young women artists—both born post-Cold War—determined to respond to the authority of the state are the focus of this proposal. Camila Lobón and Darling López turn to fossilized objects, volcanic lakes, hallucinatory blooming, as useful conceptual departure points to think about futures (Haraway 2016); at the same time, they criticize and learn from the incurable-images produced by the social sciences, national history, and cultural politics (Elhaik 2016). I attempt to discuss the nation—Cuba and Nicaragua—and the totalizing concepts that sustain it through the methodologies proposed by these artworks—speculative fabulation and assemblage—as possibilities to think about the future, looking sideways more than ahead.