Joherms Quiala Brooks - Interview

‘I DREAM OF HAVING ONE OF MY PAINTINGS HUNG NEXT TO A DALÍ’

By Reinaldo Cedeño Pineda

Blessed by the Pope. A window on a rebel personality. Every person has his own color and flavor. “I’m constantly alert. I have a second sense that is always ready to react to what people are thinking or doing.” The artist as a chronicler of his times. “A black man has to be as authentic as possible.”

A huge cross was erected a few meters from the colossal statue of Cuban hero Antonio Maceo seated on a horse. The fight for national independence and the history of the Church came together in the year’s most significant event: in Santiago de Cuba’s Revolution Square, Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, Cuba’s patron saint, would be crowned by His Holiness John Paul II.

The popemobile pushed its way through the morning heat and circled the square. Its occupant got out of the vehicle and walked into the crowd. Meanwhile, the sun followed him faithfully and cast a ray of light on the altar set up for the occasion, and on the very chair where the Pope would sit.

Representatives of Cuba’s eastern region were there in force. A delegation from Guantánamo, the easternmost province, slowly made its way up the green marble staircase to greet the sovereign of the world’s smallest state, The Vatican.

In his hands, Joherms Quiala Brooks carried one of his own paintings, this congregation’s present to the Vicar of Christ.

“Bless me father,” he said, and his lips kissed the papal ring.

The Pope, whose given name is Karol Josef Wojtyla, looked at the painting, in which the image of the Virgin Mary is blended into views of the Cuban countryside. He looked at Quiala and bowed his head slightly in appreciation. He made the sign of the cross with his aged hand and touched the artist’s head.

In honor of this visit, the Catholic Church in Guantánamo had sponsored an art competition, and Quiala was the winner.

“I’ll always wonder why so many people came out to see the Pope, because I’m sure that many of those who attended were not religious. I myself don’t practice any religion, and I was there. Welcoming a head of state is something magical. Being near him, receiving his personal blessing, and presenting him with one of my works was undoubtedly a milestone in my life.

“There was a huge number of people and I don’t think that much more could have happened, but that was enough for me. Not because I believe that man has supernatural powers, but because he is a man many people believe in, and because he’s not a hero that has been imposed on anyone, which added to the importance of the event. That’s how I felt it and then I wondered, ‘Am I a member of this church he leads?’

“The date coincided with my birthday, January 24, 1998, when I turned 28, so I told myself, ‘This can’t be a coincidence.’ I started thinking about the fact that on your birthday you set goals for yourself, because you’re a year older, and you leave other experiences behind. I sat down and tried to figure some things out and started religious studies. Today I’m still going to church.”

And how much religious sentiment have you maintained, beyond that first impression? How much myth or devotion pervades your work?

“My religious education started with the Catholic Church, but I’m planning to learn about as many churches as possible in order to establish my true spiritual identity, because I know I have a spirit, and fortunately I reflect it in my work.”

A ‘RESTLESS BUT ENTHUSIASTIC’ ADOLESCENCE

In his poetry, Regino Boti wrote a precise portrait of this city that is still apt today. “My hometown! I love your Catalonian frugality and your straight streets.”

The city—almost a perfect grid—was declared a Spanish township in 1871, although there is evidence that more than a century earlier, courageous residents fought off a British landing in their bay. The city of Guantánamo was virtually ignored by authorities until the start of the 20th century; now it is the capital of Guantánamo province.

As the result of an opinion poll, a sculpture called La Fama (Fame), by Italian artist Américo Chini, was chosen as the city’s symbol. And this is no coincidence, since for many years the mythical figure has been watching over the people of Guantánamo from atop what was once Salcines Palace, the former residence of celebrated architect and engineer José de Jesús Leticio Salcines y Morlote.

The legacy of immigration from the West Indies—Jamaica and other English-speaking countries as well as Haiti—can be found everywhere: in last names, in family ties, and in the culture in Guantánamo. Indeed, one of the most universally known Cuban songs, Guantanamera, is about a woman from Guantánamo.

Its ample bay, with excellent natural resources, is occupied by a U.S. naval base; to the south, the Guaso River crosses the city. Indeed, Guantánamo is often called “the town of the Guaso.”

This is the environment, “between the sea and the mountains,” in which Joherms Quiala was born. Art came to him naturally rather than being handed down in his family, although Grandpa Nicomedes was among the few skilled cabinetmakers in Guantánamo.

At the age of 14 he was a member of the first graduating class from the School of Fine Arts, but his love of drawing and painting dated back at least a decade. His father, his aunts and uncles, and his mother Milagros, a teacher, loved to arrive home with a box of colored pencils or a notebook, knowing how much joy they would bring to little Joherms.

He will be eternally grateful to teachers like Ernesto Cuesta and George Pérez, “who took me under their wing and put up with my restless but enthusiastic adolescence. You know, sometimes it’s hard for a teacher to determine if his pupil is badly behaved or just full of energy.

“As a teenager, I had lots of questions and I needed answers, and it wasn’t always easy to convince me. It bothered some people when I would say that I wanted to grow up. That may have created a certain impression of me that I had to live with.”

When he passed the entrance exams for the National School of Art in Havana, a teacher invited him over for a soda. And along with the snack, she offered him some wise words:
“Joherms, you will be away from home, in a place where people won’t know you or your family. You’ll have to behave like a man.”

And those studies in Havana opened up a whole new world for him, about 1,000 kilometers from home.

“I set goals for myself. Everything was so intense, I came into contact with lifestyles so different from mine. Although we’re all Cubans, every region has its own characteristics. I was more rebellious than ever. I didn’t have a lot of close personal relationships, and I had to prove myself, as a student and as a human being.

“I got into specialized, updated literature and information. I could attend art biennials, movie and theater festivals... and my cultural knowledge increased. My impetuousness was not totally accepted, so I found a small group of young people like myself, from my own race.”
All of this brought about some problems, which were eliminated two years later with another thousand-kilometer trip, this time to Santiago de Cuba.

Looking back, could it be that your training in two different schools was beneficial for you?
“Havana was a school of trends, very much in touch with what was happening in the world, and it was easy to look at the students and pay attention to what was happening in the world. Plus, there was more up-to-date literature available.”

“Santiago was a different kind of school, a school enduring on the basis of its own heart and soul. I had to readjust, because the students’ philosophy was different. In Santiago, the professors were younger, and I believe that in the classrooms they were not only trying to train artists, but to improve the whole human being.

“In Santiago, I got to know Carlos René Aguilera, nowadays one of the best Cuban painters, and his father José Julián Aguilera Vicente. Just looking at José Julián was such a delight.

“I also recall an excellent engraver, Arturo Salazar, and others who were never my professors, such as Julia Valdés and Mayito Trenard. I believe that getting to know all of these figures really helped me, it enriched my personality. Today I know what I can achieve, and when I should hold back.”

In 1989, Joherms Quiala Brooks was appointed as a professor of engraving and drawing at the José Joaquín Tejada Art Academy. Life continued to change. He had taken on a task in which he surely would encounter more than one “restless but enthusiastic” teenager like he once was, and he would see that everything depends on how you view things.

Can you tell us anything about this period of your life?

“When I graduated, my life entered a new stage; my personal life took on new nuances and I had to deal with students. I had to do what other people had done for me. But I really only worked as a teacher for a short time.”

Did you meet any students who reminded you of what you had been like at that age?

“Well yes, I found some who were like me, at least there were some with the same energy... And I talked to them and gave them some advice. I never tried to smother or cut that energy short.”

Do you consider yourself an engraver or a painter?

“I was always a painter, but on the advice of a teacher I took my exams in engraving, because they were easier to pass. Today I want to go back to what I majored in, but engraving is very expensive: the paper that has to be of a certain thickness, the inks, the equipment, the acids, the plates, the wood...

“And besides, nobody creates things that aren’t in demand, and the market for engravings is very specialized, and it’s really hard to succeed in it. But I’ve always been a painter.”
When he returned to Guantánamo, Quiala ran a gallery in the small municipality of Manuel Tames, at a particularly difficult period of time for the economy and during a prolonged drought.

“My job as director didn’t me leave much time for creating, participating in events or putting on shows. I had very little time for my own interests, so I decided to become what is known in the world of fine arts a freelance artist.”

CRYING OUT OR SINGING?

Curiously enough, two great complementary and kindred spirits coexist in this young artist: sometimes they divide, but they always move forward and eventually they come together again.

There is the Quiala who searches for artistic excellence deep inside himself, the philosopher whose reflections seem more suitable for someone twice his age, and the maker of his own destiny.

And the other Quiala is an everyday citizen, not at all highbrow, who is well integrated into a community “with all kinds of people, with different colors, different flavors and different hairstyles, people who love you and people who hate you, a neighborhood with all the aromas of life, connected to my memories and my future. A neighborhood of low-income people, without ostentation, where you struggle for everything you’ve got.”

What do you mean by “different colors and different flavors”?

“At all times, you have to be able to identify your color. For instance, if you arrive late to the office because you had to deal with some kind of problem, people will jump all over you without even asking what happened. That creates a mood which can be either receptive or defensive. We aren’t always aware of the color or flavor we create in different circumstances, and we don’t know how to identify it.

“Right now there’s an exchange going on between the two of us, and we change the color and the flavor when you ask and I answer, you present an idea and I explain. In the end, it’s not something physical or anatomical; it’s something very personal and it’s in my work.
“One example is El vendedor de riquezas (The Seller of Wealth). This man’s environment cannot be very poetic or picturesque, because in the background there’s a landscape, but the color of the landscape has changed, because he sells what he himself cannot enjoy.”
His work reflects this strength of character. That realization can be somewhat painful, but he is determined to shed all the light and shadow that these times require.

His authenticity is not to be taken lightly. Sometimes it is biting, but it is always straightforward. For instance, in La piel como riqueza (The Skin as Wealth), a hand scratches through the landscape, to discover what is underneath. Eros bathes his work.
He has reworked the contexts and textures of Cuban and universal masterpieces, both paintings and photos. One notable example is Juguete (Toy), a doubly symbolic adaptation of a scene captured by world-famous Cuban photographer Alberto Korda. In Quiala’s painting, the little girl holds a can of Coca-Cola.

At home, his photos and half-painted pictures accompany you from the living room to the backyard, serving as silent witnesses to his constant activity, creativity and enthusiasm. His son Olaph is already making simple drawings.

“All of us are products of the periods in which we live. Cuba’s great independence leader José Martí said that, and it has fallen upon me as an artist to speak of the events which have marked Cuban life in recent years, how the dollar took on such a prominent role in our lives, the economic difficulties. Artists are like chroniclers, but there are those who express life in its most elegant forms, while others show the rougher aspects, or use greater ingenuity, and that’s what it’s all about.”

Aren’t you afraid that this emphasis on a concrete context may soon make your work outdated, or isolate you from a universal audience?

“No, because the universality of an artist’s work is created by the very work he does. It would be hypocritical for an artist to expect, from the very beginning, to form part of a universal language. First there must be a process of establishing the validity of his work, which is the basis for that universality.

“It would be a rather sad if I tried to escape my immediate circumstances in order to achieve something that may take many years. Besides, the way my work evolves should be appreciated from its very beginnings. It didn’t bother me, and it still doesn’t, to speak about my immediate context, and today I am still living in it.”

In your work, are you crying out or singing?

“This is the first time that someone has recognized this, but of course the stages in an artist’s life are reflected in his work. Those stages come out of psychological, circumstantial, and social values that surround the artist. And if I am good at communicating my feelings, then I reflect them in what I’m doing. So it seems that I have indeed achieved that—sometimes with a song, sometimes by crying out.”

But paradoxically, Guantánamo does not seem to appear in your work, at least in most of it.
“If we talk conceptually, you’ll never find Guantánamo, because what I owe most to Guantánamo is that it has forged my rebellious personality; that was born here.

“Formally, I aim to portray Guantánamo, my view of Guantánamo. I need to do it again, because now I have a wider perspective, I’m more professional than I was a few years when I did a series. That was a romantic look at the city, by someone who had not yet discovered it in all its complexity.”

An intellectual from Guantánamo once said the city’s charms lie within its walls. Do you agree? Have you searched for these charms?

“You have to be well inside and dig really deep; but it has always been my belief that in the most dramatic moment, in the toughest of places, if you know how to search well you can find a moment of poetry, something to make you dream.”

Is your dialogue with the landscape always so critical?

“You are talking to a person who, as a student, hated landscapes. In class, I painted grass or a tree trunk, not the whole tree. Today, circumstances have led me to change my formal view of art, but I don’t reproduce nature pictorially. Instead I have the landscape speak for itself, or defend itself.

“Landscapes are not always what surrounds you, but rather what determines the reason you are there. Now I paint from photos that I take myself or that come my way. The photos coincide with my ideas.

“Generally speaking, when it comes to painting, I dream of my painting and then I do it. I’m in a stage where I don’t do sketches. It takes time to detach ourselves from the dogmas or methodologies taught in school. Today I strive to recreate the dream, but I don’t waste paper. I spend time dreaming and memorize the image.”

And you often paint yourself. Isn’t that sort of egotistical, or is it a need to reaffirm your own personality?

“Yes, I frequently paint myself. Every human being has an ego, and just as I paint the people around me, but I must explain who I am and what I expect of myself. It’s very normal, it’s an impulse, there’s nothing planned beforehand.

To what extent does the fact that you are black influence your personality, if at all, and where can we find that in your paintings?

“We live in a tropical environment, and that obviously activates the use of colors, very particular colors related to the very concept of a message. It is my duty to express myself as an artist, but first and foremost I am black, and I can’t deny it. People always have first impressions, and of course the first thing they see about me is that I’m black.

“If I cannot direct my thoughts and actions, I cannot speak of an intention to achieve success. A black man has to be as authentic as possible, without being pressured in any way. He has to be completely himself.

“Black people have to do things for themselves, or else we’ll continue to be the forgotten ones. I always have a message for the people of my race: we should stand out for the beautiful things we do. There is also beauty beyond the white roses.”

THE DALÍ BUG

“Every morning when I wake up, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dalí.” As if that were not enough, the Spanish artist (1904-1989) stated that his name was Salvador (which means “savior”) “because I was predestined to save painting, which was threatened by abstractionism, academic surrealism, dadaism in general, and all the anarchic isms.”

He was both a genius and a maniac, an eccentric painter with a handlebar mustache who paraded through the world as if it were his own living room.

The creator of flaming giraffes, elephants with spider legs and “moving still lifes” laughed at time and geography, in paintings of rare value.

“My contact with Dalí has been only through the literature. I long to have direct contact with his work. My affinity with him was born out of my desire to be like him, because of the imprint he left on humanity.

“I’m guided by the idea that a man is not remembered by the way he dressed or the perfume he put on, but the imprint he left on humankind. And he has influenced me, too. I got the bug, I was infected by the Dalí epidemic, although maybe I’m not affected the same way as other people.”

Such a marked influence can sometimes affect your own work, or turn your admiration into mimicry or a reproduction of codes.

“Above all, I admire the formal resolution in his work, because trying to get into someone’s subjective world can be a rather sterile effort with doubtful results, whether you’re a baker or an artist. Critics may not agree.

“I always knew the difference between influence and copying. Part of my work takes Dalí as a reference, but it is never an imitation.”

Are you always on the defensive?

“Yes, because my beginnings as an artist were shaped by confrontations. You are speaking with a person who is absolutely defensive, not aggressive. I would never take time away from creating to think of a strategy for attacking anyone.

“I’m constantly alert. I have a second sense that is always ready to react to what people are thinking or doing against me, and I never lay myself bare to such aggression.”

What or who are you defensive against?

“Against everything. If at any time what you do is not in harmony with certain generally accepted interests, or certain points of view, then that’s the time when your work is questioned. What they censor is what nobody expects from you at a given moment rather than something that is done wrong or said wrong. It happens in all spheres of life.
“I believe in human perfection. I am ambitious, a dreamer, I want to be the best father in the world, the best husband, the best artist, the best man and the best friend, although it’s difficult to define what a best friend is.”

Don’t you think you ask too much of yourself?

“Yes, but if you set yourself those goals, you feel that you are getting there. You may not achieve that perfection, but if you don’t make demands on yourself, how will you improve and be the best person you can? I’m very careful about that, because I want to be able to look back and know that I didn’t hurt anybody or discriminate against anybody. That’s the way I am.”

Through the exhibits and promotion, we are trying to overcome the conflict existing between Cuba and the U.S. Do you have any comments on that?

“God willing, this promotional effort will serve as a bridge. I hope that we can finally realize our dream for all differences to come to an end. And when that is achieved, may it serve as an example for humanity.”

What are the dreams have you been able to realize and what do you still want to accomplish?

“The few results I have achieved, which are still incomplete, coincide with what I always wanted to be since I was a child: a painter. Now my great dream is to have a painting of mine hanging in The Louvre, next to one of Dalí’s, and I’m doing everything I can to deserve such a present in life.”

But, how much are you willing to leave behind to be the best artist, to be next to Dalí?

“Everything must be balanced. If I am just concerned about being the best artist and I leave the rest behind, I don’t think I’ll amount to anything.”