This is our second day in the beautiful city of La Habana, awaiting the opening of the 7th International Havana Art Biennial and things are getting exciting. Today many of the contemporary art exhibitions began to open around the city. Our day began with the opening of the Belkis Ayon exhibition entitled "Siempre Vuelvo" at the Galeria Habana Image 1 in Vedado (suburb of Havana) is a tribute to one of Havana's most promising young artists who took her life last year. Her work was included in the major exibition curated by Marylin Zeitlin of Arizona State University entitled "Contemporary Art of Cuba." The exhibit was extrememely well attended by students, artists, and the press, both local and international. Image 2

After that we made our way to the Casa de la Cultura de Plaza, also on Vedado where several artists were several artists were exhibiting their works as part of the biennial. The following artists were exhibiting their works as part of the biennial. Deborah Nofret from Cuba presented a 1.8 meter high mural examining the allure of technology printed on a inkjet printer.Image 3Beatriz Torres and Oscar Kalb from Argentina presented a collaborative installation entitled La Revolucion del Bien Estar; Scherezsada Garcia from the Dominican Republic presented new multimedia works entitled "Paraiso." Image 4 L. Dominguez from Cuba presented her newest works entitled Homenage al grabado 2000." Javier Guerra from Cuba presented an installation of his paintings on bed sheets, entitled "Esto no tiene nombre." Image 5 Other artists including Kcho had works there. (Be sure to catch his interview from Havana next month!)

We finally ended our day celebrating the birthday of Tijuana artist Erre (Marcos Ramirez) at the Centro Wilfredo Lam. Image 6 There was plenty of rum to go around and celebrate together with his family from Tijuana. The atmosphere hear is electrifying and although the Bienale has not yet officially begun, it's goal of increasing communication between all people has already started to take effect, as seen by the increasingly positive interaction between artists, curators, students, critics and the public.