Work by seven Afro-descendant Cuban artists whose practices developed far from academic training, commercial markets and the frameworks that typically shape how Cuban art circulates abroad are at the center of \u201cNo Seasoning\u201d at the Copperbridge Foundation in North Miami.<\/p>\n
Curated by Elvia Rosa Castro, the exhibition, which opened last month, draws entirely from the NAEMI Collection (National Art Exhibitions of the Mentally Ill), a Miami-based body of work by artists living with psychiatric, neurological or cognitive disabilities.<\/p>\n
Outsider art generally refers to work created beyond formal art institutions and market systems, often by self-taught artists operating outside academic training or commercial expectations.<\/p>\n
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Curator Elvia Rosa Castro, left, and NAEMI founder Juan Martin review works for \u201cNo Seasoning,\u201d drawn from the NAEMI Collection (National Art Exhibitions of the Mentally Ill), which opened Saturday Feb. 27 and continues through May 23 at North Miami\u2019s Copperbridge Foundation.<\/p>\n
(Courtesy of Elvia Rosa Castro)<\/p>\n
Castro, a Cuban art historian and curator with more than 30 years of experience organizing exhibitions in Cuba, Europe and the United States, has long engaged artists working at the margins of visibility. For her, \u201cNo Seasoning\u201d is less about classification than about presence \u2014 and about questioning how value is assigned in art.<\/p>\n
Rather than foregrounding diagnosis, she frames the exhibition through what she describes as an excess of honesty.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are no rituals. No poses. No gloss,\u201d says Castro. \u201cThe work emerges without mediation.\u201d<\/p>\n
That directness takes a distinct form in each artist\u2019s practice.<\/p>\n
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Work on paper and tape by Cuban artist Misleidys Castillo, featured in \u201cNo Seasoning.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Courtesy of the NAEMI Collection)<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the case of Misleidys Castillo, 40, an artist who was born with neurological and hearing disabilities, and on the autism spectrum. According to her mother, Mar\u00eda Teresa Pedroso, 60, she has also been diagnosed with psychiatric and cerebral conditions. Castillo is deaf and does not speak. Communication is facilitated largely through her mother and brother.<\/p>\n
For much of her life, her world has been contained within domestic space. Yet within that space, her work expands to monumental scale.<\/p>\n
Her drawings \u2014 often reaching two or three meters (about 6.5 to 10 feet) \u2014 depict exaggerated, muscular bodies rendered in pencil and watercolor, then cut, colored and reassembled on the wall. Some figures raise their arms in poses that suggest bodybuilders or mythic heroes. Others wear tiny undergarments marked with a letter inside a heart. The repetition is deliberate. The scale is insistent.<\/p>\n
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Misleidys Castillo has drawn monumental, muscular figures since she was 6 or 7 years old. \u201cShe decides when to start and when to finish,\u201d her mother says.<\/p>\n
(Courtesy of the artist)<\/p>\n
Pedroso said her daughter has drawn such figures since she was 6 or 7 years old.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe decides when to start and when to finish,\u201d says Pedroso. \u201cWe can\u2019t intervene. If you tell her something is wrong, she gets frustrated. So we let her do what she wants.\u201d<\/p>\n
When a drawing is complete, Castillo signals it in her own way. She steps back. She looks. She smiles. She touches the surface. Sometimes she kisses it.<\/p>\n
Then the work must be mounted. If it is removed, Pedroso says, her daughter will return to the wall and restore it.<\/p>\n
The intensity of that relationship was visible during a Havana exhibition several years ago. According to her mother, when Castillo entered the gallery and saw one of her large figures installed, she ran toward it and grabbed the painted hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe recognized it immediately,\u201d according to Pedroso. \u201cShe knew it was hers.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2021, Pedroso and her daughter left Havana and relocated to Spain. The transition has been difficult. Castillo had lived for decades in the same home, facing the sea. The change in environment disrupted routines that are essential to her.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe hasn\u2019t adapted,\u201d says Pedroso. \u201cFor someone with autism, change is very hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Castillo\u2019s work expands from within the constraints of domestic space, another artist in the exhibition relies on fragments of public imagery.<\/p>\n
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Gloria de la Caridad Garc\u00eda, \u201cUntitled\u201d (from the ICAIC poster series). Working with discarded Cuban film posters, Garc\u00eda constructs intricate, image-saturated compositions.<\/p>\n
(Courtesy of the NAEMI Collection)<\/p>\n
Gloria de la Caridad Garc\u00eda uses discarded posters produced by the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC). She scavenges what she can find \u2014 often damaged, sometimes stained \u2014 and draws over them in ballpoint pen and colored ink. Stars, faces and small figures accumulate across the printed surface. Later, she adds cut fragments that echo or disrupt the original composition.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I have the posters, I look at everything \u2014 the images, the color, the memory they carry,\u201d Garc\u00eda says via telephone from Cuba. \u201cThen I work over them. I add my drawings, little things that fit. The colors make people feel something.\u201d<\/p>\n
Materials are not always easy to obtain in Cuba. Garc\u00eda says she cannot afford to buy posters regularly. Sometimes friends help. Sometimes she works with whatever paper is available.<\/p>\n
She also structures her work around the more immediate demands of daily life.<\/p>\n
In another message, Garc\u00eda described caring for a 90-year-old adult at home while navigating electricity outages and financial strain.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to \u2018invent\u2019 money for food,\u201d she says. \u201cI have to cook. I have to give medicine. There are days when there is no electricity.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also spoke openly about living through a period of depression in which she even attempted to end her own life.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis work came to me later in life,\u201d says Garc\u00eda. \u201cIt has helped me understand life differently. When I feel overwhelmed, I go back to the drawings. I keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n
The emotional weight of that testimony resonates with the curator\u2019s framing of the exhibition.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor these artists, creation is not primarily aesthetic,\u201d explains Castro. \u201cIt\u2019s vital. It\u2019s how they manage their relationship with the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
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An early sculptural work by Luis Manuel Otero Alc\u00e1ntara, created before his international visibility as a dissident. Otero Alc\u00e1ntara is currently imprisoned in Cuba.<\/p>\n
(Courtesy of the NAEMI Collection)<\/p>\n
The show also includes early sculptural works by Luis Manuel Otero Alc\u00e1ntara, the Cuban artist and activist currently imprisoned in Cuba. Unlike several of the other artists on view, his confinement is the result of political repression rather than mental illness. Arrested in July 2021, he is serving a five-year sentence in a maximum-security prison on charges including \u201ccontempt,\u201d \u201cpublic disorder\u201d and \u201cinsult to national symbols\u201d \u2014 accusations that international human rights organizations have criticized as arbitrary. The pieces presented here predate his international visibility as a dissident.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is earlier work,\u201d says Castro. \u201cBefore everything became politicized. It reminds us that he is, first and always, an artist.\u201d<\/p>\n
The remaining artists \u2014 Pedro Pablo Bacallao, Isaac Crespo, Daldo Marte and Martha Iris P\u00e9rez \u2014 work across drawing, collage, sculpture and installation. Some repeat motifs obsessively. Others build dense visual fields from everyday materials. The common thread is not style but circumstance.<\/p>\n
All of the works in \u201cNo Seasoning\u201d come from NAEMI, founded in 1988 by Juan Martin while he was working in community mental health in Miami. The archive began after Martin encouraged one of the people in his care to paint.<\/p>\n
\u201cI realized there were probably many people in psychiatric institutions doing extraordinary work,\u201d says Martin. \u201cAnd no one was paying attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over time, the archive expanded to include artists from Cuba, Latin America, Europe and the United States. Some works are purchased directly from artists or their families. Others are donated. What remains consistent, Martin said, is the refusal to impose outside expectations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe moment you start telling someone how to be an artist \u2014 what material to use, what will sell \u2014 you risk losing what made the work necessary,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Over its three-month run, \u201cNo Seasoning\u201d will be accompanied by public programs and performances. But at its core, the exhibition is quieter than its title suggests.<\/p>\n
It asks viewers to stand before work that was not made for an art market, not shaped by trend and not softened for easy consumption.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis art doesn\u2019t ask to be explained. It asks to be seen,\u201d says Castro.<\/p>\n
IF YOU GO<\/p>\n
WHAT: \u201cNo Seasoning\u201d<\/p>\n
WHERE: Copperbridge Foundation, 12500 NE 4th Ave., North Miami.<\/p>\n
WHEN: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.\u00a0 Monday through Friday. Through Saturday, May 23.<\/p>\n
COST: Free. Groups by appointment.<\/p>\n
INFO: (305) 891-8293 or Copperbridge.org<\/a><\/p>\n ArtburstMiami.com<\/a> is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don\u2019t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Work by seven Afro-descendant Cuban artists whose practices developed far from academic training, commercial markets and the frameworks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[91458,91463,91476,91472,91475,91480,91459,91457,91462,91477,91470,91465,91466,91478,91468,225,227,226,91471,91469,91473,81047,91479,91467,85510,91464,85507,91456,91474,91461,91460],"class_list":["post-197076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-afro-cuban-art","tag-art-and-mental-health-awareness","tag-art-as-therapy-mental-health","tag-art-beyond-academic-training-cuba","tag-contemporary-latin-american-art-miami","tag-copperbridge-foundation-art-programs","tag-copperbridge-foundation-north-miami","tag-cuban-artists","tag-cuban-contemporary-art-outside-institutions","tag-cuban-diaspora-artists-exhibition","tag-cuban-dissident-artist-exhibition-miami","tag-disability-and-creativity-art-show","tag-elvia-rosa-castro-curator","tag-experimental-collage-and-drawing-cuban-artists","tag-gloria-de-la-caridad-garca-art","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news","tag-icaic-posters-cuban-art-reuse","tag-luis-manuel-otero-alcntara-art","tag-marginalized-artists-miami-exhibition","tag-miami-art-exhibition","tag-miami-cultural-events-art-exhibitions-2026","tag-misleidys-castillo-artwork","tag-naemi-collection","tag-neurodivergent-artists-exhibition","tag-no-seasoning-exhibition","tag-outsider-art","tag-outsider-art-definition-and-examples","tag-outsider-art-miami-2026","tag-self-taught-artists-exhibition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}