Queer Showcase – Spring-Summer 2025
June 6–29 | Artefactus Cultural Center
From June 6–29, 2025, as spring dissolves into summer and the calendar places us in a time of transition and expansion, the Queer Showcase returns to the Artefactus Cultural Center with an edition that reaffirms its vocation as a territory of openness, diversity, and creative resistance. Curated by the Artefactus Cultural Project, this series brings together artists, writers, and audiences who understand art as a way of thinking about the world from the edges, the margins, and the questions. At this threshold of seasons, queer narratives find a space for reflection, freedom, and celebration.
The season opens on Friday, June 6, at 8:30 p.m., with the exhibition “Rompecabezas: Una nostalgia sin dramas” (Puzzles: A Nostalgia Without Drama), by visual artist Sergio Chávez (Havana, 1965), who has lived in the United States since 1999. Trained at the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts and the National School of Applied Arts, Chávez worked alongside key figures in Cuban art such as Antonia Eiriz and Manuel Mendive. His work has been exhibited in Miami and Paris, and has been defined by poet Reinaldo García Ramos as a “discreet, unfussy” form of nostalgia that eschews drama in favor of evocative and humorous expression. As part of the opening evening, there will be a small, intimate concert by musician Waldo Díaz Miranda, who will accompany the opening with a selection of piano pieces. Díaz Miranda, a Cuban-American musician who graduated with honors from the New World School of the Arts and the University of Miami, has developed a distinguished career as a classical pianist, choral director, composer, and educator. His performances have been broadcast on the national radio station CMBF, and he has appeared on venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Adrienne Arsht Center, and the New World Symphony. This evening of visual art and live music kicks off the program with a sensitive and deeply evocative atmosphere. Admission is free.
On Saturday, June 7, at the same time, the novel “Negro en la Costa” by Cuban-American writer María Elena Hernández will be presented, published by Ediciones Furtivas and with the support of the Cuatrogatos Foundation. Accompanied by narrator and critic María Cristina Fernández, the author will discuss this book, which rescues the figure of Cuban thinker Walterio Carbonell from obscurity. His career was marked by internal exile and censorship after denouncing racism in post-revolutionary Cuba. Guillermo Cabrera Infante described him as “one of the few Black intellectuals in Cuba,” expelled for speaking out loud what many kept silent. This literary act is also a gesture of justice and memory. Free admission.
The second weekend of the series, June 13, 14, and 15, features “Delirios,” a play written and directed by Eddy Díaz-Souza that explores the boundaries between sanity and madness, belonging and exclusion, through a family that must cope with the arrival of an unexpected visitor. With a structure that combines absurdity, comedy, and persistent emotional density, this play reflects on the passage of time, family silences, and postponed decisions. The cast includes Belkis Proenza, Rei Prado, Alberto Menéndez, and Santiago Salas. Performances begin at 8:30 p.m., and tickets are available at www.artefactus.org.
On Thursday, June 20, “The City of Columns” opens, by visual artist Felipe Alarcón Echenique (Havana, 1966), who currently resides in Madrid. This exhibition, inspired by Alejo Carpentier’s emblematic metaphor, is a pictorial reinterpretation of Havana from a perspective that combines Neo-Cubism and Antillean Baroque. The city’s columns multiply, fragment, and transform into signs of persistence, ruin, and renewal. Alarcón’s work, marked by technical experimentation and a literary sensibility, transforms architecture into an archive of memory and a testament to the unrepeatable. Free admission.
The season closes with three performances of “The Grindr Show” on June 27, 28, and 29. This Dreki Theater production, written and directed by José Raúl Acosta, features performances by Dairín Valdés, Lola Bosch, Eddy Estrada, and Osiel Veliz. In this hybrid musical theater and cabaret, Grindr—a gender-fluid character, part dating app, part stage diva—guides the audience through a collage of LGBT+ stories where caustic humor, iconic songs, and audience participation intertwine with real-life experiences. Among the characters who take the stage are Amanda, a trans woman who auctions herself off in search of affection; Ally, a trans father struggling to maintain the love and custody of his son; Renée, a skoliosexual averse to labels until desire overwhelms her; and Nirvana, a bisexual stripper and guru with one foot in rock and the other in the spiritual abyss. As their stories intersect, the spectacle begins to fracture, threatening to challenge not only the show’s narrative but also the apparent unity of the queer community. With a critical and deeply human perspective, “The Grindr Show” brings to the fore the lights and shadows of representation, the marketplace of desire, and the struggle to inhabit one’s truth. Performances begin at 8:30 p.m., and ticket information is available on the Artefactus website.
Queer Showcase is not just an artistic season, but a platform to make the invisible visible, listen to the silenced, and summon the imagination as a political act. In its multiple languages—visual, scenic, narrative—this program confirms that queer art is not a genre or a trend, but a way of thinking about the world through difference.
For more information and tickets:
www.artefactus.org | [email protected]