As a symbolic space, the young art competition malaYerba emerged within the Fondo de Arte Joven platform to promote the discourses of the new Cuban visual artists, with their diverse languages of creation.

It was born, paraphrasing a text by the curator and art critic Gerardo Mosquera, in a similar context of inspiration, with a huge challenge: to harvest the malaYerba as an artistic fact.

According to art curator and researcher Corina Matamoros, the artistic event does not take place alone, but in a circuit where a group of experts and specialists intervene to make the artistic event itself move, and in this case, the malaYerba.

This January 24, as a result of a collective effort by turning utopias into artThe catalog of the first edition of the contest, which came to stay as a laboratory of young creation, with a solid selection of artists living and working in Cuba, was presented at the Theater Hall of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana.

Twenty-three finalists make up the volume, which contains their particular -and collective- views on migration, social prejudices, freedoms to be conquered, as a generational manifesto that also marks the existence of this project, born in Cuba, at this time.

According to Esterio Segura, visual artist and jury member of this first edition, "from that seed of malayerba, planted by Gerardo Mosquera as a concept of what is Cuban, more than art in itself, this space emerges today as evidence of the work of young artists, their capacity for research and creation".

The material, carefully designed by the Consense Studioedited by Sheyla Valladares and printed by Spanish publisher Selvi Graphic Artscompiles the work of young creators as an indispensable tool for documenting, developing and promoting their work on an international scale.

The catalog is also an indispensable bibliographic element in the professional training that the Youth Art Fund and the Fundación Los Carbonell / NG Art Gallery make available to public libraries, study centers and art professionals.