"Lam described his work as ‘an act of decolonisation, not physical but mental’. The phrase is frequently quoted by critics and is cited in the exhibition to support its claim for Lam’s contemporaneity. Less often mentioned is the fact that those words are taken from an interview published in Bohemia in 1980, in which he also insisted that ‘I would like people everywhere to be well aware of my solidarity with and confidence in the Cuban Revolution.’ For Lam, mental decolonisation wasn’t disconnected from the political kind; the two unfolded in tandem, and Cuba was carrying it out in the political sphere just as he was in the artistic one."

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n06/tony-wood/at-moma