The World of Plants in the Art of Jorge Mayet

Jorge Mayet, a painter and sculptor, comes from Cuba. As his birth date was registered the November 11, 1962 and as his birthplace the city of Havana. After Jorge Mayet finishing high school studied Art at the Cuban National School of Fine Arts, the historic “San Alejandro” (Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes “San Alejandro”), founded in 1818 by French painter Jean Baptiste Vermay. As graduated from the school, left behind not only the years of study but also Cuba.

Cuba is a beautiful and large island. Geographically, this beautiful and large island has the privilege of being bordered by two beautiful and great super powers, the United States in the North and West and the Atlantic Ocean all around. Once, of course, it was bordering on it and with a third one, but now this third, being senior citizen, was found charred and buried under the ashes of the cigar that smoked, of History, and which, asleeped, had forgotten to stub out.

Jorge Mayet artistically started as a painter to gradually realize that the two dimensions did not fit him, so he necessarily went to the third dimension, sculpture and installations. Something similar happens in his life. At some point he realized that Cuba did not fit him and thus abandoned an island and a great sea to another island and another great sea: he now lives and creates in Majorca, at the westernmost end of the Mediterranean.

Cuba is famous for its cigars. One would say that the only fixed point in the whirlwind of the history of this beautiful and large island is the cigars. Tobacco of Vuelta Abajo, which belongs to the province of Pinar del Río, at the western part of the island, is considered the best in the world. From these tobaccos, the tobaccos of Vuelta Abajo are made the best cigars in the world.

A feature of all the works of the artist is the absence of cigars. On the contrary, the earth and the plant world are constantly present together with a subcutaneous dose of surrealism – roots wrapped with cables and wings, pieces of land like islands in the air, half rivers cut lengthwise. The cognoscenti say that all his work is an allegory of the landscapes of his life.

… So what else could it be?

Cuba is famous for smokers of its cigars. One of them was the professional revolutionary Fidel Castro. Cigar smoker Fidel Castro, along with other revolutionist smokers and non-smokers of cigars, overthrew in 1959 the government and regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista. The government and the regime of the dictator Fulgencio Batista have been extremely popular, in the mafioso of all kinds and professions. The biggest achievement of the popular Fulgencio Batista government was the proclamation of Cuba as ‘The Biggest Caribbean Bordello’. The Revolution, to a certain extent and honoring the fatherland traditions, preserved this treasured title.

In Jorge Mayet’s work there is no trace of conscious political intention and position. This is what the scholars of the artist’s work argue, and we will not disagree: an uprooted tree, hanging up and down, with a small piece of land conceived on it can not have and does not have the slightest conect to politics.

Ιt has with the Arboriculture.

Cuba, both before and after the revolution, remains one of the world’s most attractive travel destinations. From the Bay of Pigs to the Guantanamo Bay and from Guantanamo Bay to the Bay of Pigs, the visitor, the traveler, the tourist will feel that paradise is not in the sky, but in these few square meters of land to this beautiful and large Caribbean island.

If he does not feel it then he will have missed the opportunity to enrich his experience, being a co-star and a spectator in the Arabian Nights of the Western Planetary Halimas.

All of Jorge Mayet’s work so far includes two states of being, fairytale and nostalgic. The fairytale is expressed as a sometimes naive but always attentive visual statement of the carefree childhood – its works in the small to minimal space once reminded of children’s toys. On the other hand, the nostalgic situation becomes deafeningly evident with the very archetypal symbols of the nostalgia of the expatriate artist – root and earth.

The allegorical and metaphorical dimension of the artist’s works, from this perspective, is fully understood. What is not fully understood is the source, the origin of the feeling of expatriation.

It misses us – and we are sorry for this – the name of the Brazilian poet, who had written in his poem that “motherland is the language“. In this sense, it is somewhat difficult for us to understand this otherwise completely understandable feeling of nostalgia that the artist’s expatriation gave rise to – in Cuba and Majorca they speak the same Spanish.

But we do not miss the name of another poet and another poem at all. The poem is titled The City and Constantine P. Cavafy is the poet.

This poem refers, among other things, to a particular version of the expatriation. It is through this version that it is very easy for us to understand expatriation and to share the same feelings of nostalgia with the artist.

Because through this particular version of the expatriation we finally share with the great artist Jorge Mayet, the same homeland.

Hong Kong.

Jorge Mayet musical farewell by three also great artists: Cuban Eliades Ochoa and Malians Toumani Diabaté, Kasse Mady Diabaté and Bassekou Kouyaté with the song Al Vaiven de mi Caretta.