From the exhibition catalogue States of Exchange, publish by INIVA, London 2008.

'I don't believe in art any more', says Lázaro. And though people who suffer from insomnia are apt to overstate their problems and phobias at times, in this case we should believe in his disbelief, without reservations. Indeed, we should even cheer and applaud it. Because it's not an affectation or a pose on his part, it's a pretty devastating conclusion drawn from his two‐fold experience as a Cuban artist and teacher of art. All the same, his statement is hardly surprising, no more surprising than the fact that he has continued to make art despite his loss of faith. Not to believe in anything (or in very little) has become a fairly common mindset nowadays. Art has always found a way to dissimulate this feeling and even to overcome it productively, with elegant hypocrisy.

However, Lázaro Saavedra is the last person who should feel guilty or lose any sleep over this, since he is one of those rare artists who have never been beguiled by the prestige that garlands successful creators, and has consistently applied his skepticism in a critical, creative and educational manner. It is, after all, a socially optimistic kind of skepticism. Lázaro knows very well that to make art is not a matter of decorating or embellishing reality, nor does it involve inventing another world that could serve as a refuge or a momentary paradise, even if he is more than equipped to do both those things. He also knows that teaching others to make art (if that were possible) means little unless they are also taught to think and act honestly within their society. But to achieve this, various impediments that stand in the way must first be demolished, and one must be oneself prepared to take any risks that may arise. Chief among Saavedra's tools for the task is a thoughtful, mordant, mocking humour, which he often directs as implacably against himself as against the institutions and disciplines he is involved with.

What is more unusual, and possibly unprecedented, is the fact that Saavedra has been a member of every avant‐garde wave that rolled out in Cuba from the mid‐1980s to the present day. Most artists who start out being contrary, unruly and all‐round difficult are usually knocked out by the end of a few rounds, either vanquished by the relentless body‐blows of official intolerance and censorship, or neutralized by the blandishments of the capitalist market. In middle age many such has‐beens stick to perpetuating their youthful feats of bravado in pale, innocuous variations on the same, between wheeling out paper tigers that roar like kittens. Others simply change jobs or retire from sight. But not Lázaro. He has unswervingly performed a most precious function for Cuban society at large, and especially within the national art world; an indispensable duty that calls for constant relays, though unfortunately there is not always someone to take the baton — the job of the one who's not afraid to stick out his tongue or aim a kick up the ass at anything that goes haywire.

In other words, Lazaro's steady presence among the Cuban artistic vanguard is not precisely due to any radical updates of his language or style. His real concerns reside beyond appearances. The key to his relevance is not to be found in the aesthetic sphere, but rather in the relationship his pieces forge with ongoing social, political and ethical issues. Aesthetic novelty is fragile and fleeting. Its inner power dwindles and may even disappear the minute a new range of stimuli arrives on the scene, designed to tickle our insatiable, fickle senses in a new way. It's only when aesthetic novelty is en‐twined with or embedded into urgent, important human needs and expectations located beyond the pleasure centre that its scope becomes meaningful and lasting, for as long as these wants remain unsatisfied. In a society like Cuba's today, artists can draw from an almost inexhaustible well of unsatisfactory and unresolved situations, scenarios that are continually multiplying and developing but rarely becoming outmoded. When such needs and conflicts are plentiful, and the solutions are regularly withheld or postponed, any art that neglects to address such issues begins to look idle, not to say like a luxury pastime, a mischievous red herring or a complicities game. And while Lázaro has never ceased to target perverse, debased or reprehensible situations, attitudes and behaviors in his work, it seems quite appropriate to me that he should go on suffering in silence, plagued by nightmares. For any intellectual or artist to enjoy a good night's sleep in our times would be a disgrace.

By Oralndo Hernandez