Los Superarquitectos (The Superarchitects): Cuban Youth imagining and Creating Futures through Street art, Graffiti & Skateboarding
Date
2018
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Swarthmore College. Dept. of Sociology & Anthropology
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en
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Abstract
In this paper, I will be looking at the Revolution's use of visual communication and street
art, artists whose work can be found in Havana area today, and skate culture in Havana to
understand the visual as tool. Through this, I will show the government's strategic use of the
streets, the city, and the visual in establishing a new Cuban identity. With that as context, I show
how street art and skateboarding in Havana, Cuba today reveal current tensions between the state
while allowing youth to express themselves and imagine alternative realities within the state. In
this way, street artists and skaters in Cuba create and embody the multiplicity of the Cuban
identities while creating Cuba's future. Street art and skating become political arts and threats to
the state because the state responds to them as threats. By painting and skating in the streets,
young Cubans embody and practice future building. In creating alternative reflections of itself,
the Cuban society physically manifests its own future, but through the actions of individuals.