![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/TATIANA-MESA-PAJAN-crop-photo-by-Dave-Decker.png\")
Tatiana Mesa Paj\u00e1n at Dave Decker Photography in Ybor City, Florida on Jan. 12, 2026. Credit: Dave Decker \/ Creative Loafing Tampa Bay<\/p>\nTatiana Mesa Paj\u00e1n at Dave Decker Photography in Ybor City, Florida on Jan. 12, 2026. Credit: Dave Decker \/ Creative Loafing Tampa Bay<\/p>\n
Tatiana Mesa Paj\u00e1n<\/a> was an established artist in Cuba before immigrating to the United States in 2013 to join her sister.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was in Cuba, I was doing well as an artist,\u201d Mesa Paj\u00e1n told CL. \u201cI wasn\u2019t really so aware of politics. I was in my artistic bubble.\u201d<\/p>\n Mesa Paj\u00e1n came to the U.S. with a support system of galleries and collectors in Europe. But once in Tampa, that system collapsed. Suddenly, galleries that had shown her work in Europe were no longer interested. Collectors who had once traveled to Cuba just to meet her and buy her work stopped answering her emails. She was effectively ostracized by the Cuban contemporary art world outside the island.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m talking about Miami, New York, Barcelona, Madrid,\u201d Mesa Paj\u00e1n told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.<\/p>\n She had to start over. She became a \u201csedano\u201d (person who stocks, arranges and sells goods in Cuban Spanish), a cashier, a waitress.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a shock to me, because I was privileged in Cuba,\u201d says Mesa Paj\u00e1n. \u201cIf you are an artist in Cuba, you are privileged. You are part of the elite. You have privilege that other people don\u2019t have.\u201d<\/p>\n At first, she thought that maybe folks had just lost interest in her art. But then she witnessed the 2021 protests in Cuba from her cell phone, uniformed officers pulling teenagers from their homes, repression, death.<\/p>\n \u201cNow there are no excuses,\u201d she explained.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea that the entire Cuban art market is monopolized by the dictatorship sounds crazy,\u201d Mesa Paj\u00e1n admits. \u201cIt took me a lot of years to come to the conclusion that most of the Cuban art market outside of the island is totally controlled by money coming from this regime. So they cannot really give opportunity to people who are not trustworthy to them.\u201d<\/p>\n In this environment, Mesa Paj\u00e1n says she can no longer remain neutral.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not Cuban art,\u201d she boldly states. \u201cI\u2019m not contemporary Cuban art, because I don\u2019t want to represent that.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, Mesa Paj\u00e1n took whatever honest work she could find and focused on raising her son. While working as an art instructor for the Department of Juvenile Justice, she met someone who encouraged her to get an M.F.A. in the U.S. so she could teach at a university. Once Mesa Pajan became a professor in Tampa, invitations to show her work in Havana once again began to flow.<\/p>\n \u201cBut what do I have to do in order to get those benefits? I have to go to Havana. I need to have a studio in Havana. I need to travel to Havana and take a picture on the Malec\u00f3n. I\u2019m not going to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s what a lot of people are doing,\u201d Mesa Pajan continued. \u201cThey tell the Americans it\u2019s a dictatorship and they claim to be denouncing things, but they have their studios in Havana and they take a picture in Havana. That [picture] might be used to make people think it\u2019s not so bad, because this person is vocally open about [Cuba being a dictatorship] and is traveling, and nothing is happening to them. No. Totalitarianism doesn\u2019t work like that. There are people who have their permissions to say that\u2014it\u2019s strategic on the part of the regime. I don\u2019t want to be one of those people. I want my money to be clean.\u201d<\/p>\n More than a decade after leaving Cuba, Mesa Pajan re-emerges with her first solo show in the U.S. at the Dunedin Fine Arts Center.<\/a> \u201cM\u00edo\/Mine,\u201d at the Dunedin Fine Arts Center through Feb. 22, celebrates the common gestures that make us human, from kissing to telling our stories, constructing our own personal realities and seeking that which is familiar to us. It\u2019s a recurring theme in Mesa Pajan\u2019s work. Although it\u2019s new to Tampa Bay area audiences, Mesa Pajan has been collecting human gestures and contemplating their meanings for more than 20 years.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very important that we focus on humanity right now,\u201d Mesa Pajan concluded. \u201cWe are in a shifting moment where the next generations will be narrated by AI. There is no way to skip that, and we know how important narratives are. This is more important than Cuba or than myself\u2026My work is bigger than what happened to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Pitch in to help make the Tampa Bay Journalism Project a success.<\/a><\/p>\n Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.<\/a><\/p>\n Follow us:\u00a0Google News<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0NewsBreak<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Reddit<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Instagram<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Facebook\u00a0<\/a>|\u00a0BlueSky<\/a><\/p>\n This article appears in Jan. 29 \u2013 Feb. 04<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n \t![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Tatiana-Mesa-Pajan-Stone-Joan-of-Arc-at-Skyway_Photo-by-Jen-Ring.jpeg\")
\u2018Stone Joan of Arc\u2019 by Tatiana Mesa Paj\u00e1n Credit: Jennifer Ring \/ Creative Loafing Tampa Bay<\/p>\n