One night in Havana is an original book imagined by Thomas Henriot. It is a tribute to Reinaldo Arenas, whom he discovers and overwhelms him in Julian Schnabel's film "Before Night Falls". It is a return to the places where the Cuban author lived in Havana. “Thomas Henriot places the viewer in front of his visions, these landscapes crossed by a constant desire for romantic encounters. Theater of his fantasies, and of ours, Cuba is a commonplace, a cliché of exotic eroticism. Sensuality emerges there, like color, like resurgences of the present. It muffles, becomes embedded in the image, crackles on the retina, as when squeezing the eyelids after staring at the light for a long time. Flash. " (Anne-Cécile Sanchez)
It is in the form of India ink drawings that Thomas Henriot makes us immerse into his own fantasies. Upon graduating from Fine Arts at the age of 23, the artist devoted himself to drawing with India ink and brush on paper from traditional Chinese painting. “I had the chance,” he says, “to work with masters as a student at the XI’an Academy of Fine Arts in China in 2005. It is the cosmic origin of the trait that fascinated me, and the characteristic of my approach is to have adapted it to the urban environment in the form of performance. "
One night in Havana consists of a preface by Anne-Cécile Sanchez and an interview she conducts with Thomas Henriot, followed by a text by the artist. The book will be presented with a lecture, a reading and an exhibition at the prestigious Alliance française in Havana on the occasion of the Book festival in early February 2021.
(Photograph of Ferrante Ferranti in Tangier in 2019)