Four years of rampant creativity! Not to mention the beer and the barbecues!
Mora Brothers s will be taking part in Big Tent, Falkland, Fife 15-17 June, www.bigtentfestival.co.uk; and at the 900th Traquair Fair (August 3-5th-2007), Innerleithen, nr Peebles, Scottish Borders, 4-5 August, www.traquair.co.uk. Other possible projects include working with the Rebecca Hossack Gallery London; and the Edinburgh Mela with other things in pipeline
Noah’s Ark project and workshops at WOMAD, Cáceres, Spain (May); Mask Workshops as part of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum’s Che exhibition (Che, Cuba’s National dish and Fruity Carmen Miranda) (June); Noah’s Ark workshops at Croydon Festival (July); Noah’s Ark animal workshops at WOMAD Reading (July); Cuban cooking and cocktail workshop at WOMAD Reading (July); Garden workshops (figures) Edinburgh, (July); Stage Set for Havana Rumba (Assembly Rooms) five star ***** Edinburgh Fringe Festival Show directed by Toby Gough
London’s Victoria and Albert Museum’s Che exhibition
(Che, Cuba’s National Dish and Fruity Carmen Miranda)
Garden workshops
(figures) Edinburgh
Croydon Festival & Mela
WOMAD, Cáceres, Spain
Major on site sculpture and major arts community workshops for WOMAD Australia (WOMADELAIDE); workshops and on site sculpture for WOMAD Taranaki New Zealand
(see WOMAD foundation gallery)
Womadelaide : Artworkshops, Procession piece
Smaller Mora pieces made for Womadelaide
WOMAD Taranaki New Zealand
SUMMER 2004
ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE, WOMAD, UK
www.womad.org
www.womadshop.com
Filiberto and Yanoski Mora’s international reputation
is fast growing as they continue creating superbly inventive papier-maché
creations at home and abroad. Summer 2004 sees
the Mora Brothers as invited Artists-in-Residence
for the UK based international WOMAD (World of Music and
Dance) Foundation. The Moras have created a special WOMAD
BUS as the symbol of this years Festival. Their theme will
be the wheel and Filiberto has summed up their ideas in a poem:
“The wheel and the man/ The wheel made the man strong/
The wheel and the horse made the man strong/ The wheel and the oil
made the man destroy/ The child with the bike is the hope of the
world”.
Their five-week residency began in June: as part
of the WOMAD Foundation Education Programme, they
have created a host of fantastic and original papier-maché
sculptures through working with different groups of children
and young adults in week long workshops in five different schools.
They have built on their reputation for making small-scale replicas
of Havana taxis and buses, spilling over with passengers, luggage
and animals, to life-size copies of red cadillacs and gleaming Harley
Davidson motorbikes to wonderful decorative sculptures of Afro-Cuban
Santería Orishas and Saints, as well as special pieces like
those created for Ibrahím Ferrer, lead singer of the world
famous Buena Vista Social Club. The Moras have built on the heritage
of artist Antonia Eiriez, who in the 1960s pioneered community art
involving papier-maché, theatre and music.
With pupils of The Avenue School, Reading, they
created a fantastic tree full of fabulous birds
from eagles to magpies, kingfishers to owls; at St James
Smiths’ Community School, Camelford, Cornwall they
made a huge vibrantly colourful bus full of people
who look like they hope their final destination will be a Havana
beach!
At Speedwell Technical College, Bristol regional
TV news cameras came along to film and interview Filiberto Mora
and the group of children with whom he and Yanoski worked to create
individual characters, from strong men to Tarzan, a flamenco
dancer to a giant rabbit. As he showed them how to make
people out of rolled newspapers and ‘maskin’ tape’
Filiberto said, “the magic of all this is that none
of us know what we will end up with. And whatever we do will be
very much our own.” As Perry, one
of the pupils, told him, “We got plenty of newspapers,
wire, flour and water at home but I never realised you could do
something interesting with them ‘til now!”
At Langleywood Secondary School, Slough, a Cuban-British
lorry bristling with characters came to life, as
well as a host of riotous head-dresses and ‘farola’
parade poles for the local Carnival Procession.
Finally the brothers are spending the week before WOMAD
in residence at Reading’s Rivermead Centre creating
a life-size bici-taxi just like those pedalled
and also pulled by in this case a goat around the streets of Havana,
save that this one will be double decker! They will be working on
site at WOMAD during the Festival as part of the workshops
for children organised in their honour this year on the theme of
transport (watch out for flying carpets!)
Asked why they work in papier-maché, the brothers said,
“Resources were scarce in the 1990s in Cuba so we
started to re-cycle materials and make models of the veteran American
cars you see on Cuban streets to sell to tourists at the artists
markets and galleries. We made lorries too like those being used
in rural areas to ferry people around. We were part of a larger
group of artists who were interested not so much in making souvenirs
as pieces which paid homage to Cuban life. And we found we loved
working in papier-maché, that it had a lot of benefits. We
live from the energy of ideas and like to work fast. We found it
responsive and a lot of fun. You can speedily shape characters based
on the people around you. And every single piece we make is unique.”
They attribute their vivid and playful imaginations to the striking
stories their father made up for them as children, mixing historical,
mythical and real narratives and events all together.
AUTUMN 2003/SPRING 2004
In July 2003 the Mora Brothers won First Prize
in the Havana City Salon Exhibition with their
exhibit Matríz, a contemporary techno homage
to the Santería deity Oggún (see pictures and Exhibitions
section)
Continuing the theme, in September 2003 the Moras
had a solo exhibition El Poder de las Orichas (The
Power of the Orishas) at the Centro de desarrollo de las artes visuals,
Old Havana (see picture and Exhibitions section) drawing a huge
public to great acclaim.
In April 2004 they exhibited at the Exposición
Escuela Columbia at the Galería ‘La
vía Panamericana’ in Cojímar, near
Havana as part of the exhibition organised by students of the Arts
Faculty of the Enrique José Varona College who were students
between 1987-91.
The Mora’s exhibited Catamaran’ made
in brown-paper, based on a photograph Filiberto Mora had seen in
a newspaper while working in Scotland in August 2003 of a floating
catamaran bus made by a group of Cubans aiming at sailing from Havana
across the Florida Straits to a new life in the USA. They also exhibited
Cyber-Changó, an oil painting in the style
of the Old Masters.
Fili with the Catamaran |
Cyber-Changó |
The Mora Brothers latest exhibition ‘El Poder de los Orichas’
(The Power of the Orishas) opens in Havana on September 9th 2003
at the Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales in the Plaza Vieja,
Havana Vieja (Old Havana) until 30 September 2003, open
daily Monday to Saturday from 10am until 4pm. Curated by José
Angel Toira and Meira Marrero it explores the multiple objects used
by Santeros of the Afro-Cuban Santeria religion to express the spirituality
and powers of Orisha deities using ideas culled from old and modern
technologies.
Filiberto
Mora’s sculpture Chango x 3 is at
present exhibited as part of the 8th International Shoebox
Exhibition, University of Hawaii, and will become part
of the Travelling Exhibition visiting galleries throughout the United
States and Taiwan for the next two years. .
In
June 2003 the Mora Brothers exhibit the work ‘Cyber
Ochun’ in the Salon de Arte Digital, Havana (opening
June 15th).
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