Santiago

20x20 cm

CUBA

CONTEMPORARY Heritage
The past as a propeller of the aesthetic transformation
There is, all over the world, a general trend which is keen on finding an overall style we could call contemporary vintage.
This dimension of aesthetic research has to do with that look on the history of tradition and culture that the critic Simon Reynolds named retromania. In other words, the idea that the prevailing style in the contemporary world is an eternal, remixed flow of fragments and quotes from the past.
In this respect, the retro-future he envisages works in the same ways as those tried out by the Art Nouveau and Art Déco of the Cuban experience: namely, using a similar creative process where the original models are imported from Europe and crossbred into the culture of local production.
Actually, after importing such aesthetic moulds, the local producers developed their own native style by changing the colour palette and emphasising the graphics.
This is evidence of the idea of an approach: which the company went back to and embraced.
Research may be done with what exists. And the eleven decorations in Mipa’s Cuba project are proof of that.
Rather than traditional research, we might call it a research in tradition, that is, the ability to build, through a sensitive interpretation, a new territory that takes inspiration from history, even if perfectly capable of understanding the complexity and extent of the present.

By means of the Cuba collection Mipa opens in 2011 a new “traditional research” line: eleven decorative patterns mirroring the Cuban decorative tradition.
Laura Renna has developed a new collection of decorations in combination with the new colours mirroring the Cuban decorative tradition.
It is a unique combination of cultural references, harmonies and atmospheres, leading to a markedly contemporary imagery reinterpreting traditional styles.
Seducing colours with a strong personality and expressive decorations are the characteristics of the Cuba line and lead to a new original vision combining and mixing past and present.