“Seeing in the dark”: the aesthetics of disappearance and remembrance in the work of Alberto Rey
This article examines how contemporary Cuban American artists have experimented with visual languages of trauma to construct an intergenerational memory about the losses of exile and migration. It considers the work of artist Alberto Rey, and his layering of individual loss onto other, traumatic epi...
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| Format: | Article |
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Cambridge University Press
2017
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| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/45279/ |
| _version_ | 1848797102902083584 |
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| author | Lewthwaite, Stephanie |
| author_facet | Lewthwaite, Stephanie |
| author_sort | Lewthwaite, Stephanie |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | This article examines how contemporary Cuban American artists have experimented with visual languages of trauma to construct an intergenerational memory about the losses of exile and migration. It considers the work of artist Alberto Rey, and his layering of individual loss onto other, traumatic episodes in the history of the Cuban diaspora. In the series Las Balsas (The Rafts, 1995-99), Rey explores the impact of the balsero (rafter) crisis of 1994 by transforming objects left behind by Cuban rafters on their sometimes ill-fated journeys to the United States into commemorative relics. By playing on a memory of absence and the misplacement of objects found along the migration route of the Florida Straits, Rey’s visual language transmits the memory of grief across time, space and generational divides. Rey’s visual strategies are part of an “extended memory” tied to the aesthetics of disappearance and remembrance in contemporary Cuban American art. His use of objects as powerful memory texts that serve to bring fragmented autobiographical, family, and intergenerational testimonies of loss together, suggests how visual artists can provide us with more collective, participatory and redemptive models of memory work. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:58:33Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-45279 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:58:33Z |
| publishDate | 2017 |
| publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-452792020-05-04T18:47:00Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/45279/ “Seeing in the dark”: the aesthetics of disappearance and remembrance in the work of Alberto Rey Lewthwaite, Stephanie This article examines how contemporary Cuban American artists have experimented with visual languages of trauma to construct an intergenerational memory about the losses of exile and migration. It considers the work of artist Alberto Rey, and his layering of individual loss onto other, traumatic episodes in the history of the Cuban diaspora. In the series Las Balsas (The Rafts, 1995-99), Rey explores the impact of the balsero (rafter) crisis of 1994 by transforming objects left behind by Cuban rafters on their sometimes ill-fated journeys to the United States into commemorative relics. By playing on a memory of absence and the misplacement of objects found along the migration route of the Florida Straits, Rey’s visual language transmits the memory of grief across time, space and generational divides. Rey’s visual strategies are part of an “extended memory” tied to the aesthetics of disappearance and remembrance in contemporary Cuban American art. His use of objects as powerful memory texts that serve to bring fragmented autobiographical, family, and intergenerational testimonies of loss together, suggests how visual artists can provide us with more collective, participatory and redemptive models of memory work. Cambridge University Press 2017-05-25 Article PeerReviewed Lewthwaite, Stephanie (2017) “Seeing in the dark”: the aesthetics of disappearance and remembrance in the work of Alberto Rey. Journal of American Studies, 51 (2). pp. 591-621. ISSN 0021-8758 Alberto Rey; Cuban American art; Cuban diaspora; visual culture; memory; trauma; exile; migration; balseros https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-american-studies/article/seeing-in-the-dark-the-aesthetics-of-disappearance-and-remembrance-in-the-work-of-alberto-rey/FB579EEFAEE7CE54C74005AE38D60AF3 doi:10.1017/S0021875816000979 doi:10.1017/S0021875816000979 |
| spellingShingle | Alberto Rey; Cuban American art; Cuban diaspora; visual culture; memory; trauma; exile; migration; balseros Lewthwaite, Stephanie “Seeing in the dark”: the aesthetics of disappearance and remembrance in the work of Alberto Rey |
| title | “Seeing in the dark”: the aesthetics of disappearance and remembrance in the work of Alberto Rey |
| title_full | “Seeing in the dark”: the aesthetics of disappearance and remembrance in the work of Alberto Rey |
| title_fullStr | “Seeing in the dark”: the aesthetics of disappearance and remembrance in the work of Alberto Rey |
| title_full_unstemmed | “Seeing in the dark”: the aesthetics of disappearance and remembrance in the work of Alberto Rey |
| title_short | “Seeing in the dark”: the aesthetics of disappearance and remembrance in the work of Alberto Rey |
| title_sort | “seeing in the dark”: the aesthetics of disappearance and remembrance in the work of alberto rey |
| topic | Alberto Rey; Cuban American art; Cuban diaspora; visual culture; memory; trauma; exile; migration; balseros |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/45279/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/45279/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/45279/ |