Rafael Consuegra and his passion
for sculpture

Mireya Castañeda

RAFAEL Consuegra (Santiago de Cuba, 1957) is a sculptor surprising in his unique vision and skill in giving life to metal. His sculptures range from miniatures, medium-size to monumental works.

Consuegra, who graduated from the Advanced Institute of Arts (ISA) in 1983, had his first one-man exhibition, Montages, Ensamblajes, in 1985. He has participated in more than 70 collective shows in Cuba and Brazil, China, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Spain, the United States, Martinique, Mexico, El Salvador, Venezuela, Gabon and Austria.

His sculptures are part of collections in Havana’s Servando Cabrera Moreno Museum; Vienna’s Contemporary Arts Museum; the Emilio Bacardi Museum in Santiago de Cuba and the Small Format Sculpture Museum in Las Tunas province; and in cultural centers in Nayarit, Mexico, and Bratislava, Czech Republic; and the Bernardo Quetglas Collection, Majorca, Spain.

This interview took place in the gardens of the National Union of Writers and Artists (UNEAC) and began with his recent participation in the 11th Havana Biennale (May-June, 2012).

I took part in two collective exhibitions in La Cabaña Fortress. A large piece in the outside area, on the esplanade where the cannon firing ceremony takes place. It is called "Con toda la ternura que llevo dentro" (With all the tenderness within me). It’s a bit ironic. It’s an element which is morphologically pleasing to the eye, textured, accommodated to the concept of environmental sculpture, but which carries within it a kind of pendulum which has a blade of truth. People can interact with the piece but there is always the inherent fact that you could harm yourself. In one of the fortress’ vault there was the piece "Abriendo su propio camino" (Opening one’s own way). It’s circular, compact, with two 20-millimeter-thick elements. The circle is made of a thinner piece but it also has a blade, there can be interaction but it makes a balancing movement and turns on its own axis and insinuates the cutting of the blade. They are all metal and metal has had a majority incidence in my work for a long time now.

What is there special about sculpture which made you adopt it as a means of expression?

I knew about monumental sculpture, that which is in cities. That’s the reference I had. I began studying painting and discovered sculpture in school, with magnificent professors like Frómeta, Guarionex. From the formal point of view, I was interested in its relation with space, the sense of volume itself, and that was closer to what I wanted to say. I decided on it from secondary school. I discovered and fell in love with sculpture.

Every artist sets about weaving a discourse through an idea going around in his or her head, which is finally a project. One has a theme which becomes recurrent, either in the long terms or for a specific length of time. The first thing is that one thing gives rise to another for me. Right now I’m working along a line of ideas, all related to people, their development, their inclusion in society, in the social context, with everything. I have an idea, I sketch it, and as I work on it, I improve on it. Then comes the process of selecting the material. I include elements already discovered, we are inheritors of the history of art. We take advantage of everything. Now I’m moving into 3D and am using those means, this makes the time spent on producing the piece easier and it is always enriched in the very process of elaboration.

The selection an artist makes is a conscious one, made because it favors what one wants to express. The material, like the idea, the format, the color, gives content to the work. I have worked in different materials including fine and light, ephemeral wood, and in marble, granite, metal, bronze, plaster, clay; a wide range, but quite conservative in relation to new materials being used, acrylics and smoke sculpture. Within conventional materials, what I use is related to the idea.

I have always said that I have a parallel work. For example, when I was doing tableaux and used canvas, I also did pieces in ferric cement. For exhibitions and salons I used canvas, wood, pieces of furniture. But metal always appears. In 2004, there was going to be an exhibition in what is now the Servando Cabrera Museum and they proposed sculptures which could be placed outside. Canvas wouldn’t be any good, so I thought about metal. I liked soldering and cutting and I had some postponed ideas. Then I did the "Lourdes" piece, which came to be part of the institution’s collection. I started there and now it’s a constant, day by day, I do everything in metal.

It’s a derivation. When I was in school I had a particular interest in movement, rhythm, balance; that brought me to dance, sport, which places human beings at its center. Afterward, although there were no religious practices in my home, I moved toward Catholicism and Afro-Cuban religions, from which I learned the atmosphere, congas, carnivals, ceremonial drumming and their rituals, but I was never a celebrant or practiced them. In any event, the congas and drumming introduced me to rhythm. My theme has always been human beings. The religious aspects led to states of mind of believers, social issues and, from there, I became interested in day to day and universal aspects. That’s what I’m doing now, humans and their environment, with their social development, their aspirations and frustrations.

It was hotel settings which gave me my first opportunity to including my work in public spaces; the only limitation was that the theme was an alien one. But not so much, because my ISA thesis was an environmental sculpture which I had the good fortune to create and it’s at the entrance to the Tuxpan hotel in Varadero. In a sculpture with a public bearing you have to take into account the surroundings, the visuals, roads, light, proportion, colors.

Works that have brought you closer to yourself and the public?

The Tuxpan sculpture, which was like a breakthrough, emerging from anonymity after the ISA. It gave me another dimension which I was capable of creating. I was very rigorous, given that it was the first. It’s in ferric cement, facing the sea. They all give me satisfaction, as I said, one is the consequence of the other. I have to say that tableaus also gave me a lot of identification.

I’m working on a project for a symposium in Santiago de Cuba of which I have many expectations because I have pieces in many provinces but not in my native city, just one medium-sized one in the Bacardí Museum collection. Now I’m doing one for an outside area, I conceived it in metal and the theme is mine: human beings, society. It is to be called "El despegue" (Take-off).