In Cuba the recognition and presence of the female artist is more prevalent and supported. Many of the women artists, such as Sandra Ramos, utilize feminine life experiences, intimate feelings, and the female body to create works that speak of social, political, and cultural problems. Their art contains symbols and ideologies associated with global feminism. Ramos often uses such powerful symbols of mother, earth, goddess and home in self-portraits, in personification of the island and its issues. In Self-recognition of the Fish I, Ramos depicts herself as a goddess in the tradition of renaissance master Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus. She is adorned by several symbols and material objects, which signify her divinity and humanity. Her head, hands, and feet are each anchored by small aquariums, each filled with tiny furniture and live fish. Like Venus, she is born of the sea and is becoming part of the sea. Her body is depicted as a mosaic of mirrored glass, so that the viewer becomes part of her transformed image. The tubes of the filtration system are like externalized arteries, as if she is no longer capable of existing without this life-support system. Beyond its significance as a metaphor for Cuban restrictions on basic human freedoms, the work is also a feminist critique of conventional domestic life as a restrictive " comfort zone."

Implicit is the awareness that we all function within limitations, whether self-imposed or forced upon us by external circumstances.

In his delicate drawings and figurative sculpture, Estévez explores, invents, and constructs philosophical images of the past, present, and future status of not only the Cuban man but the universal man. He fuses the worlds of man, nature, technology and industry. He applauds the marvelous mechanics of the human anatomy, in correspondence to structural workings of a city or an analytical mechanical process. In the drawings on view, Designs of the Spirit, a power plant is analogized with the human body, both generators of power. The essence of these figures and forms in their mystic environment are drawn from Cuba's economic difficults, decay, and possible strenghts. Estevez looks to the heritage of the people, their cultures, their religions, their individuality, their intellects, and their capacity to invent and reforem. His works inspire a new hope for the current changes and international influences facing Cuba today. The hanging sculpture, The Prophet, signals the change in attitude and practice of religion that has increased in the since the visit of Pope John Paul II to Cuba in 1998. This new approach and identification with religion exemplifies the characteristic ideology changes being offered to Cubans today. Throughout his work and many of the artists in the exhibition the pulse of Cuba is a nation embarking upon great change.