For ROCI CUBA in 1988, Rauschenberg produced a series of paintings on aluminium and steel using primary colours, which were displayed at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, the Castillo de la Fuerza and Casa de las Américas, and at the Galleria Haydee Santamaría, Havana.
According to the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation website, the artist countered criticism that his paintings did not celebrate the complete history of Cuba during an open forum for students and the public, saying: “To break down barriers, I think you need to see as an alien does—to get lost in the city, or in the country, to see things in Cuba that maybe you are blind to.” Due to the US embargo on Cuba, works for the exhibition were required to pass through Mexico before arriving in Cuba.
The exhibition includes works made in a variety of media, shown in the different countries, such as Night Post/Roci Mexico (1985), a cardboard composition dotted with tequila brand names, and the vast silkscreen work Caryatid Cavalcade I/Roci Chile(1985).
Julia Blaut, the senior director of curatorial affairs at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation in New York, says that the internationalist aspect of the ROCI project strikes a chord in today’s more isolationist world.
She says: “When planning this exhibition for Thaddaeus Ropac in London, the ROCI works felt especially compelling and relevant to this moment in time when countries around the world are becoming increasingly nationalistic and isolated. We felt there might be a worthwhile message in looking again at ROCI and the collaboration that can be achieved through finding common ground in culture. As Rauschenberg himself said: ‘Art has no borders. Specialisation leads to cultural sterilisation. An artist is a diplomat, a prophet, a historian, a poet’.”
The project also made politicians at the time sit up and take notice. “The countries he chose were largely places where artistic dialogue had been suppressed, where he felt that artists were existing in isolation, and where he didn’t think politicians were doing a very good job at creating dialogue or building bridges. He was collaborating with people whose politics he didn't necessarily agree with in his desire to make exchange happen and open up to new ideas,” Blaut adds.
