Featuring 16 watercolour paintings by one of the Miami Five, Antonio Guerrero, the Absolved by Solidarity exhibition opens in London’s Bolivar Hall next week.

Guerrero, unjustly locked up with four other Cubans in US prisons for monitoring Miami-based terror groups, has created the exhibition to mark the 16 years of imprisonment of the three still incarcerated. 

Other artwork by contemporary Cuban artists will also feature and are to be sold in aid of the campaign to free the Five and there’ll be a special evening reception on Friday December 5, addressed by the new Cuban ambassador Teresita Vicente.

Guerrero says that he hopes his paintings will bring the injustices of the case to new people who will be able to see that the Five have always defended the truth with dignity. 

Each painting records different elements of the rigged proceedings of the trial in 2000. 

They address the impossibility of a fair trial in Miami, the restrictions on consultations with lawyers, the degrading treatment by prison officers, the payment by the US government of thousands of dollars to journalists to write inflammatory articles, the refusal to allow all the family members to be present and other obstacles to a fair trial. 

Despite the outcome of the trial, Guerrero says: “We never saw ourselves as defeated, knowing that we stood absolved by the many honest men and women in the world who have now formed a continuous wave of solidarity which will never end until we return to our homes.”

One of the most moving paintings, of clapping hands, represents the unexpected applause from other prisoners that greeted the Five when they returned to their cells following the verdict. 

The guilty verdict “was offset by that gesture of respect, admiration and support which could well be called the first act of solidarity with our cause,” Guerrero says.

Exhibiting alongside Absolved by Solidarity are paintings created by Guerrero for the 15th anniversary of the imprisonment of the Five, with each depicting an aspect of the first 17 months of imprisonment when the Five were kept awaiting trial in punishment isolation cells known as the “hole” at the Federal Detention Center in Miami.

Hosted by the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, the exhibition is timed to open on the day of the annual vigil in support of the Miami Five, an evening event outside the US embassy on December 3 that will be addressed by Aleida Guevara, the daughter of Che. 

The exhibition runs from December 3 at Bolivar Hall, 54 Grafton Way, London W1. Details: cuba-solidarity.org.uk