NZ Visual Diary - Cuba obsession

bronze statue of Francis of Assisi (Havana | Cuba)

The intersection of religion, politics & culture and visual allusion are so palpable in this image that I find the photograph rather startling.

The bronze statuary figure in the photograph is that of Francis of Assisi, the Italian mystic, poet and towering religious figure of the Middle Ages who was canonised by Pope Gregory IX in 1228.

An itinerant preacher for much of his adult life, Saint Francis espoused the Christian virtues that would serve as the grounding of his eponymous order - the Franciscan Order: vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. In keeping with his dedication to a life of poverty and simplicity, Saint Francis is most often depicted in artistic renderings wearing the simple brown habit of a Catholic friar.

Now notice how the sculptor elected to render Saint Francis. Dressed in secular clothing, the Saint Francis represented here is that of everyman, at once medieval wayfarer, colonial Spanish itinerant and modern Cuban revolutionary. The Francis of Assisi memorialised in this Havana street sculpture symbolises both the downtrodden of the millennia - serf and peasant alike - and the towering figures who in word and deed took to countryside and street to defend them and bring about revolutionary change at once ideological and material.

Beyond the intention of the artist, the backdrop in which the statue stands is richly symbolic of contemporary Cuba. The bell that might heralded with thunderous sound an epoch of prosperity and freedom for modern Cuba is unanchored from its towery perch, held in silent abeyance unable to toll a message of hope and imminent possibility.

Finally, the building scaffolding is richly emblematic of contemporary Cuba’s political economy: its infrastructure is crumbling, in need of costly repair at a time when funding to build and repair has been held hostage by the US embargo and the global geo-political convulsions of the past 30 years. The scaffolding offers both intimation of transformative progress to come and grim allusion to the prison-like constraints imposed at present upon the Cuban economy and its people.