Two photographs from my Cuba series "¡No hay más na’!" (there’s northing left) have been shortlisted for this year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
The exhibition, which has run annually without exception since 1769, showcases art by invited artists, Royal Academicians, and emerging talent. In recent years, the exhibition has featured work by renowned artists such as David Hockney, Wolfgang Tillmans and Tracey Emin.
The theme of this year's exhibition, coordinated by celebrated British painter David Remfry RA, is ‘Only Connect’. Artists were encouraged to interpret each year’s theme using every imaginable medium – from photography to sculpture, architectural works and more.
“Only connect” resonated with me because of my recent experience photographing Cuba in the depths of its worst socio-economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Living conditions have induced desperation and hopelessness and the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of Cubans.
Creating new images in Cuba – an island I’ve photographed extensively over the past two decades – suddenly felt very different. I was reconnecting with a place from which I’d become disconnected during the global pandemic. At the same time, I’d become a parent and my “adopted” Cuban family left the island for the United States following the “rumbo al norte” (route northwards). I was seeing things from a different perspective and felt a responsibility to document that as both a researcher of visual cultures and a photographer.
Working on the island has meant witnessing the daily struggles faced by many Cubans, including shortages of basic goods, frequent power cuts and families forced out of homes at risk of collapse into albergues (abandoned buildings refashioned as temporary accommodation). One of these homes features in the two shortlisted RA artworks.
The first shortlisted image depicts a washing line hanging in a family’s living quarters. The other is a portrait of two young boys resting on an armchair. I’ve come to think of the two photographs as a diptych that speak in different ways to Cuba’s past, present and future situation. Both scenes felt emblematic of prevailing hopelessness and desperation in this deepest of Cuban economic crises.
You can read more about my Cuba series "¡No hay más na’!:" here.
– James Clifford Kent, London, April 2023