The Youth Art Fund (YAF) will inaugurate the exhibition contest in its usual space, the Salón Blanco Gallery, located in the Convent and Basilica of San Francisco de Asís in Old Havana, next Thursday, November 30.

The exhibition is the result of the first edition of the contest for the visual arts malaYerba, projected from the platform as an initiative focused on supporting the most recent promotions of Cuban visual artists living and working in Cuba.

According to Neida Peñalver, coordinator of the YAF, the idea of a new contest arises from the need for spaces of visibility and circulation for emerging art, sustained during the last decades.

"There are just a few examples that remain amid a sustained crisis that has also affected the institutional management from which most of these contests have emerged –say, salons, contests, announcements of various kinds," says Peñalver.

The name of the contest is a nod to the definition of curator and critic Gerardo Mosquera, in his words in the catalog of Las metáforas del templo (The Temple Metaphors), a group exhibition that became a milestone in the historiography of contemporary Cuban art. That exhibition, held in 1993, featured a roster of very young artists at the time –nowadays relevant figures of the island's visual panorama–.

"We emphasize the constant germination of artists, works, and projects amid a habitat that insists on being rough for them," says Sandra Garcia, curator of the exhibition.

The exhibition that has resulted from this first edition approaches the group expression of a set of concerns of a new generation of artists; however, it seems that we are facing constant déjà vu: stories, scenes, and icons already recognizable for those who have spent some time in contact with contemporary Cuban art, adds Garcia.

This exhibition joins three others held by the YAF since its creation in January 2023 by the Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC). It is therefore the right place to announce the prizes selected by the jury.

As a cultural platform for the promotion of emerging Cuban art and the support of cultural enterprises that carry out their creative projects from Cuba, with an emphasis on the visual arts and music; the YAF brings together multiple donors and partners, such as the International Committee for the Development of Peoples (CISP), the Los Carbonell Foundation (FLC), the Habana Clásica Cultural Association (ACHC), and the Center for Exchange and Reference on Community Initiatives (CIERIC), with terms of reference included in the "A Ritmo de Inclusión" program, co-financed by the European Union (EU).