The Jungle is the best-known work by Cuba’s best-known artist: Wilfredo Lam.

And you still probably haven’t heard of it. Cuban artists do not always get the same attention as their American and European siblings because, well, imperialism. But that does not make Lam any less of a brilliant artist or The Jungle any less of an important piece.

There are lots of reasons that The Jungle stands out in a crowd. It’s a dynamic, 64 square foot canvas packed to the brim with explosive Surrealist imagery. But it’s also a very different portrait of Cuba than what was being portrayed in 1940s America. Popular imagery showed Cuba to be a colorful, frivolous, exotic place, where Americans could go to drink, party, and generally escape the dullness of everyday life. These images often included sexualized portraits of light-skinned Cuban women dancing with maracas, a depiction which was every bit as cringey as it sounds. 

Lam had a strong aversion to these caricatures of his culture, labeling them “cha-cha-cha” images. He once said “I wanted with all my heart to paint the drama of my country, but by thoroughly expressing the negro [sic] spirit...I knew I was running the risk of not being understood either by the man in the street or by the others. But a true picture has the power to set the imagination to work, even if it takes time.” And it did take time. Lam developed this piece for over a year before painting it, ultimately creating over fifty preparatory gouaches.

In The Jungle, Lam combats commercialization of Cuba with his own iconography that, in true Surrealist style, is more psychological than literal. The Jungle isn’t composed of trees or mosses, or really any plant that you might actually find in the forests of Cuba. Instead, the piece is composed of workers and their crops, creating a towering forest out of a twisting distortion of sugarcane, tobacco, and the bodies of the workers that harvest them. There are also horses in Lam’s jungle, which, again, aren't native to Cuba— it’s possible that they’re a reference to Santeria, a Cuban religion Lam may have practiced that fuses Afro-Cuban spirituality with Catholicism. In Santeria, individuals possessed by deities, known as orishas, are portrayed as horses. And while we may not be mind readers, in a piece about the devastating effects of American occupation, it’s not hard to imagine why Lam included beings characterized by the theft of their agency.