Cuban artist and activist Nonardo Perea shares in an interview his exile experience in Spain following his involvement with the San Isidro Movement. He describes the hardships of forced migration, its toll on his family, and his creative work as a form of denunciation against Cuba's regime. Despite newfound freedom, he grapples with isolation and financial struggles.
Nonardo Perea, a Cuban artist, writer, and audiovisual creator, has centered his work on his queer identity and dissident personal experiences. After 20 years in ceramics in Cuba, he turned to independent journalism at Havana Times. His departure to Spain in 2019 was driven by State Security due to his role in the 00 Havana Biennial, organized by the San Isidro Movement, which he still supports.
Prior to a course in Prague, he endured interrogations he calls just that, not 'interviews.' In Spain, he has ramped up activism, using audiovisual pieces to denounce his Cuban ordeals as an act of revenge against the dictatorial system. Yet exile brings profound loneliness: 'My work here has been difficult, because I've done it alone and it has also been marked by the loneliness of exile, which is terrible,' he states.
His elderly mother, alone in Cuba, weighs heavily; as an only child, he cannot return. As an asylum seeker, he avoids going back amid lifelong discrimination for his homosexuality. He feels privileged for not being Black but invisible as a gay man without art school training. Publishing in Cuba was grueling: his first book took ten years and needed awards like the Franz Kafka in Prague.
At 46, migration triggered panic attacks, insomnia, and the end of an eight-year relationship, though he feels freer as a non-binary gay person. Recently, he released two Instagram films: one on his arrival in Spain with Yanelis Núñez and another on exile. Perea highlights imprisoned figures like Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel Osorbo, calling for the dictatorship's fall.