In a space within the Café at Cine Encanto, I had the opportunity to talk with the Peruvian artist Sonia Cunliffe. The images from her video art "Operación Peter Pan. De ausencia en ausencia " (Peter Pan Operation. From Absence to Absence) still echoed in the room, a work as intimate as it is devastating, projected moments earlier on a screen just behind us.

On the set, an old 16mm projector remained still, like a guardian of memories, similar to the ones that once accompanied the travels of mobile cinema through rural lands. This time, mobile cinema will accompany the Peruvian artist’s work on a unique journey: one in which history and art intertwine in a profound and heart-wrenching dialogue.

Sonia arrived in Cuba defying the winds of a hurricane, with a clear purpose: to meet a special truck, one-of-a-kind in the entire island, a truck with the shape of the old mobile cinemas that once transported dreams and stories to every corner of the country.

This vehicle, carefully and proudly maintained by its driver, is a rolling reliquary, a piece of historical memory that Sonia has chosen as the setting for her work. The driver and his truck embody a counter-narrative, a cultural and emotional counterpoint in which the artist seeks to deposit her message, along with the scars of a migratory past that still hurts.

In the café, Sonia spoke with serenity and commitment. With "Operación Peter Pan...", she aims to restore memory, to build bridges towards an episode often silenced in Cuban history. It is a one-way journey into a past so real and brutal that it barely seems possible: between 1960 and 1962, fourteen thousand Cuban children were sent abroad, on forced migration flights, away from their parents, who, in their desperation, relied on the hope of a swift reunification.

For most of them, that reunion never occurred. This exodus, which sought to preserve childhood and protect it from the uncertain, became, for many, a traumatic loss, a journey to Neverland that cut short their childhood and forever altered the course of their lives.

Sonia’s proposal for the Havana Biennial presents itself as an exercise in living memory: the truck, converted into a cinema hall, will receive spectators as passengers of a moving memory. People will board the vehicle, and during the screening, they will undertake the “journey to Neverland”, reliving firsthand the heart-wrenching journey experienced by the Cuban children, separated from their families and homeland.

Through this artistic space, Sonia wants the audience to recognize this historical moment, to live it with renewed sensitivity, and that, at least for a moment, the pain may find its way through, to be shared, understood, and healed.

With her unconventional narrative, the video is disturbing; it provokes an emotional tension that runs deep. In the end, it seems that this discomfort is unavoidable, necessary. But watching and processing it today, in present-day Cuba, takes on a different hue.

Amidst a present filled with blackouts, shortages, and the onslaught of hurricanes, where daily life seems designed to challenge our resilience, this work also has an emotional rescue aspect. Cubans carry a burden that demands space and time to be recognized, felt, and addressed. In this context, art becomes a refuge, a form of healing.

The Peruvian artist, who has had the collaboration of Cuban journalist Maribel Acosta in content production, seems to understand this need. In that experience, tension and pain transform into something that also leads to catharsis, to that space we so desperately need to look at ourselves and recognize in our own stories of struggle and loss.

Sonia reminds us that memory and identity need attention, as if they were another muscle of our being. Through this "journey to Neverland", Cubans are invited to board the truck, to listen to the echo of that lost childhood, and to find in art a mirror that returns a reflection of who we are and the strength that still remains within us.

As I listened to her, I felt the intensity of her mission. Meanwhile, I imagined the truck moving through the streets of Havana, carrying within it the resonances of a mutilated childhood. There is a powerful metaphor at play. " Peter Pan Operation. From Absence to Absence" revives as a reminder of a shared past that continues to travel, like the truck, through the memories of those who still seek to find the pieces of their history.

Translated by Linet Acuña Quilez