malaYerba.
Youth Art Contest

As a result of the collaboration between the Fondo de Arte Joven and the Los Carbonell Foundation (Panama), a visual arts competition was created in 2023. malaYerbafocused on supporting the creative processes of Cuban artists residing in Cuba, with the purpose of boosting their professional activity, promoting their works, and contributing to the projection and consolidation of their careers.

With annual frequency and national character, this competition had two editions managed within the platform, and the publication of a printed catalog in 2025, with funding from the Fondo de Arte Joven.

Ten young visual artists were awarded, out of a total of 52 finalists and 138 participants from all over the country.

Second edition of malaYerba

Weed fertilizer

Sometimes it feels like going against the current. Everything on this island happens at a pace and in a way that only those of us who inhabit it are able to follow or understand? Having turned uncertainty into daily breath, we are deciphering clues that allow us to advance to the next level that we have not yet glimpsed.

It would seem that the new generations inherited the dreams that had been postponed. But surrealism should have been born in the middle of the Caribbean and not in Paris. Suddenly, we do not know how, projects, new forms, reinventions emerge. On the edge of the asphalt boiling under the August sun there is something green, being born every day.

This is how a new edition of malaYerbaThe context -inherent to contemporary Cuban art- has been a natural fertilizer for a group of works selected as finalists in the visual arts competition organized in Havana by the Fondo de Arte Joven and the Los Carbonell Foundation, partner and manager of the project's visual arts profile. The context -inherent to contemporary Cuban art- has been a natural fertilizer for a group of works selected as finalists. Once again, the social vocation and the tropological breath that have defined artistic production in the last four decades come to the surface.

These new creators identify their most harrowing realities and take them to painting, photography, video and installation. They have learned how to get around precariousness; their professional predecessors have bequeathed them the tools to do so. They know they are indebted to themes and ways of doing things; nevertheless, they insist, like those who are certain that there is nothing left to lose.

Twenty-nine young Cuban artists are once again breaking the asphalt and seem to restore our faith.

Sandra García Herrera
September 7, 2024