Castro Condemns American Fridges, Cuban Artists Embrace Them

One of the last things Cuban dictator Fidel Castro did before dropping off the radar a year ago was buy up 300,000 Chinese refrigerators to replace the old American fridges his people had kept running since the 1950s, the kind that El Comandante considered “dragons which devour our electricity.” But the effects of this “exchange program” (i.e., give the People $200 and the Revolution won’t kill you) are only being felt now, with the twist that the discarded Frigidaires and Kelvinators have become the medium in a popular art exhibit touring Europe these days. (It was supposedly “a hit” in Cuba before that.) The artists turned these Cold War relics into shameless kitsch like the medal-wearing, olive drab “General Eléctrico” seen here, a makeshift escape boat, a Trojan horse, and a jail cell. (A bunch of Cubans loading their art with political statements? You don’t say!) Then, of course, there’s this guy:

Ernesto García Peña, a painter, turned his into an eroticized female image. “In this heat,” he explained, “the refrigerator is almost worshiped for its role as an absolute necessity of modern life. We treat it with very special affection.”

Is it a problem that we find fridge-ophilia more hilarious than disturbing?

In Cuba, a Politically Incorrect Love of the Frigidaire [NY Times]
Image [Jose Goitia / NY Times]