Canadian artist Ingrid Bachmann visits the Mano a Mano workshop

The CCICC has a great start to the year by visiting again the ACAA headquarters and the Mano a Mano workshop in the beautiful city of Matanzas last Monday, January 6. On this occasion we were accompanied by Mrs. Ingrid Bachmann and Mr. Wojtek Gwiazda. Ingrid Bachmann is a contemporary Canadian artist based in Montreal, known above all for her interactive kinetic sculptures that combine technology and everyday objects. Her work has been exhibited throughout Canada, as well as internationally in the United States, Peru, Brazil, Germany, Belgium, Scotland, Australia and Cuba where she exhibited her art at the 11th Havana Biennial in 2012.

Artists of the stature of Osmany Betancourt Falcón (Lolo), Manuel Hernández, Helga Montalván, and Dariel Lozano, whose pieces embellish the recently renovated Paseo de Matanzas, together with the President of the ACAA, Antonio Pérez Marrero (Tony), prepared an interesting tour of their premises with the human warmth and passion that characterizes Matanzas’ artists.

In 2013 Mano a Mano was born, a project of cultural exchange between artisans of the Canadian region of Quebec and the province of Matanzas that has been considered as an opportunity for both peoples to dialogue, to know each other better through art, their cultures and their most authentic traditions. In 2017, the opening of the headquarters of this project in the heart of Matanzas was celebrated. It is a space that offers courses of craftsmanship, training for children and young people, and has had many donations of equipment and raw materials made to the artists by the Canadian community in the different years of work.

It is an honor for the CCICC and its members to be able to collaborate in the promotion of the efforts of Cuban artists to preserve their heritage and to make way for new creations in diverse manifestations of art through the activities that are carried out in the Mano a Mano workshop, as well as the project of the Casa Atenas, a space where Canadian artists will be able to reside and exchange with Cuban artists during their stay in the heart of the city of Matanzas, the Athens of Cuba. The Casa Atenas promises a project of art, fraternity and friendship of peoples between Cuba and Canada.