Two of the most impressive and moving experiences I ever had before works of art occurred

when aesthetic and social components empowered each other. Both factors were so well inte-
grated that these works could be considered either art or social actions. Thinking about this
today makes me even more aware that a key reason for my attraction to art is its manifold po-
tential for dealing with things beyond itself in a unique, profound manner.
Both works were performances. Not that I have any particular inclination towards this form,
but only the qualities of performance art could have carried the impact of these specific works:
action and experience were the means of shaking things up. These extraordinary performanc-
es, which did not occur at main art centers but in crumbling Old Havana, addressed critical
cultural, social, and political issues in Cuba. What’s more, they took an active part in them.
The actions both happened during the Havana Biennial, one as an alternative, independent
event, the other as part of the Biennial’s parallel program. The first one took place in 1997, the
second in 2008. Both were by Tania Bruguera. In between them lies a decade of intense artistic
actions that has credited Bruguera as a major international figure in performance art.

Cuba in Tania Bruguera’s Work: The 1997 performance was held on a late afternoon in the artist’s home, located at a turbu-
lent spot in Old Havana. Unfortunately, the only available visual documentation of this ac-

The Body Is the Social Body tion are artist Pedro Abascal’s photos. There is also the recording of a reenactment staged
by Bruguera. The work is very difficult to describe because a crucial aspect was the setting’s
··· complex environment and the ambiance that the performance created around it. The artist
opened a wide entrance, rarely in use, that directly connects her living room with a narrow
G erardo M os q uera street and a creepy bar right in front. In this way, her private space became part of the pop-
ulated, intense street life. All the furniture was removed, and Statistics (1996–1998), an art-
work consisting of a twelve foot high Cuban flag made out of human hair—some of it coming
from friends of the artist who lived in the country and others who had just gone into exile—
was hung as the backdrop. The artist stood in front facing the street, dressed in white jump-
ers with an open lamb carcass hanging from her neck and two ceramic bowls before her. In a
state of concentration, Bruguera took soil from the bigger bowl, moistened it in the smaller
one containing fresh water with salt, made small balls of the dirt, and ate them.
Titled The Burden of Guilt, the action referred to a legend about native Cubans eating soil to
commit suicide as a passive way to resist the Spanish conquistadores. Wearing a lamb car-
cass as a sort of dress was another reference to protection through submission. The perfor-
mance also alluded to a Passover ritual, in which water with salt recalls the suffering and
tears of the Jewish people enslaved in Egypt. More importantly, “to eat dirt” (comer tierra)
is a Cuban expression that means to suffer strong hardship. The performance took place
at an extremely critical period in Cuba, after the country’s patron, the Soviet Union, col-
lapsed, and in the midst of the Cuban regime’s unwillingness to reinvent their politics in
order to respond to new times. As a result, people in Cuba were “eating dirt.”

22 23
Antonia Eiriz, Una tribuna para la paz democrática (A Tribune for Democratic Peace), 1968 Ángel Delgado, La esperanza es lo único que se está perdiendo (Hope Is the Only Thing that We Are Losing), 1990
Oil and collage on canvas Unauthorized performance at the exhibition El Objeto Esculturado (The Sculptured Object)
86 1/2 x 98 1/2 inches Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales, Havana
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana Courtesy Cuban Performance Art of the 80s (Chronology)
Photograph by Corina Matamoros Photograph by Adalberto Roque

And yet, beyond all these references and other more intimate suggestions of guilt, sacrifice, what was going on—“She is saying that we all are eating soil!” a man retorted—sweated,
and endurance, the gesture of this young Cuban woman eating Cuban dirt in Old Havana agglomerated. The performance space actually became part of the street, in what could be
for forty-five minutes, introducing the Cuban soil, the Cuban land, into her organism at a considered a public artwork emanating from a private realm. The situation was vibrant and
critical time, feeding on it or poisoning herself with it, was so candid, so disarmingly imme- noisy, with people exclaiming out loud and the street sounds, from traffic to laughs, creat-
diate, heartbreaking, and poignantly rich in meanings and feelings that it was impossible to ing an intense atmosphere in which performance, audience, location, sounds, smells, and
divide it from a living piece of reality. The artist’s body was her own subjective body, but it context were woven together.
was simultaneously ritualized into a social body. Tatlin’s Whisper #6 (Havana Version), the 2008 performance, was a participative action at
A main signifier for this artistic experience was its setting. The space was packed with people the central courtyard of the Wifredo Lam Center (the institution that organizes the Havana
from the Cuban art world and international visitors who were in Cuba for the Biennial, and Biennial). A stage with a podium, two microphones, and a huge golden-brown curtain as
also with neighbors, passers-by, children, and people attracted by such an unusual event, background were placed at one end. The set was reminiscent of the staple one used by Fidel
while customers in the bar watched from across the street. There was a constant, random Castro for his speeches. The microphones were connected to an amplifier with speakers,
flux of people walking around or staring inside for a while and then continuing on their one of them at the building’s entrance, pointing to the street. Two actors, a woman and a
way—even a dog entered the space and stayed close to the artist. The police arrived later. A man dressed in Cuban military uniforms, stood at each side of the podium. The woman had
dynamic, ever-changing mix of very diverse people looked, commented, tried to understand a white dove in her hands. Admission to this event was free, but, in contrast to The Burden

24 25
of Guilt’s mixed, spontaneous, more grassroots audience, the space was filled with people As one can see, an event like this is a major, striking issue in Cuba. The next day, the 10th
from the Cuban art world, mainly young artists, and with students, writers, and Cuban and Havana Biennial Organization Committee published an official proclamation condemning
international visitors to the Biennial. Two hundred disposable cameras were handed out to the performance in the most authoritarian terms and language. This declaration complet-
the public by Bruguera to document the event. Then people were summoned to speak their ed the work’s semantic circle, showing its political impact. But, as Bruguera has also stated
minds on the podium for one minute. In other art contexts this would not have had any in On Politics, artists’ privileged position can only exist if people with real access to power
special relevance. In Cuba, it was an historic event: for the first time in half a century a free allow it.3 Why was a project like Tatlin’s Whisper #6 (Havana Version) allowed? In my opin-
public tribune was allowed for people to express their ideas. Thus, the artwork managed to ion, the Biennial organizers, the State Security, and other implicated officials miscalculated
use art’s more permissive field to create a space for freedom in a totalitarian context. The the possibility of people reacting so strongly to the occasion facilitated by the performance.
performance was art due to its symbolic structure, and because it was labeled as such and was They probably thought that self-censorship as a result of terror would make people afraid
taking place in an art framework. Simultaneously, it was a radical political action in Cuba. to take the risk of speaking out and, in the case of someone going beyond the limits, his ac-
Tatlin’s Whisper #6 (Havana Version) took Irit Rogoff’s productive notion of “the exhibition tion would take place within a reduced art context. The authorities possibly considered also
as occasion”1 to the extreme, while uniting art with the real, as in The Burden of Guilt. In her that the audience would chiefly consist of international visitors and that some light critical
lecture-performance On Politics, Bruguera has pointed out that “art is a safe platform from expressions would serve to project a good image. The prospect of no one daring to speak
which to have a dialogue about political ideas and even try new political structures.”2 out was also considered by the artist, who conceived her piece to work in a different way
The first person to take the podium was Guadalupe Álvarez, a Cuban critic and professor in case the public remained silent. She thought of the empty podium as a “monument to
who played an instrumental role in the so-called New Cuban Art by supporting and discuss- the void,” a monument to Castro’s absence after fifty years of being a daily, overwhelming
ing it during the 1990s, while introducing contemporary theory at Havana’s University and presence for Cubans.4 Also, an empty podium with two microphones was famously paint-
Art Institute, for which she was given so much trouble that she was forced to resign. She fi- ed in 1968 by Antonia Eiriz, a leading Cuban artist who was censored and who reacted by
nally left the country for Ecuador, where she still lives today. The military-looking actress renouncing art for the rest of her life in a dramatic statement about repression and free-
put the white dove on Álvarez’s shoulder, in an obvious allusion to the emblematic image of dom. The empty podium would clearly refer to that emblematic Cuban painting and the
dove-on-the-shoulder Castro delivering his first speech in 1959 in Havana after the revolu- story behind it.
tionary victory against dictator Fulgencio Batista. Meanwhile, the actor kept control of time But that did not happen, and what took the authorities by surprise and upset them the
on his watch. To general surprise, all Álvarez did at the podium was cry, a painful, awesome most, as can be deduced from the official declaration’s content, was the presence and partic-
statement given the performance’s references, the context, and her personal story. ipation in the performance of persons officially labeled as dissidents. Since the mid-1980s,
Many diverse speakers went to the podium, received the dove on their shoulders, and, many of the artists in Cuba have played a critical role by frequently discussing the country’s
if they exceeded the one-minute limit, were violently taken away by the “military” actor. crisis in a serious and complex mode. Most of these critical artists, including Bruguera her-
Among the initial speakers was Yoanni Sánchez, a famous young Cuban blogger, officially self, can be considered dissidents. However, until Tatlin’s Whisper #6 (Havana Version), there
tagged as an active political dissident, who advocated for free Internet access in the country. was a split in Cuba between critical artists and opponents to the regime who by engaging in
The performance snowballed into an unexpected, spontaneous political rally. Statements direct, peaceful political resistance are marked as dissidents and “counterrevolutionaries”
ranged from calls for free elections to shouts of “Freedom! Freedom!” Participants in the and treated harshly. As in Sánchez’s case, their actions usually consist of criticizing and de-
audience became outspoken while, at the same time, concern with repression saturated the nouncing the situation in Cuba—very similar to what artists do. However, the latter are
environment with a tense, fearful climate. Perhaps the statement that epitomized the whole not classified as dissidents and enjoy tolerance by virtue of being artists—many of them are
event was that by a woman who said that she wished that one day freedom of speech in well known internationally—and thanks to the indirect, metaphoric character of art’s po-
Cuba would not have to be a performance. Indeed, Bruguera’s art work managed to profit litical criticism. Although a few artists like José Angel Vincench and others have included
from art’s privileges (aura, tolerance, international attention) in order to make the impos- references to Cuban political dissidents in their works, Bruguera mixed both sectors for the
sible possible in Cuba: a free public tribune. Art created the opportunity for political action, first time, bringing them together to perform an artwork that was both artistic construction
opening a space for freedom. and real political action, even in the very character of the participants involved.

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Carlos Cárdenas, Manera de marchar adelante (Way of Marching Ahead), 1988 Lázaro Saavedra, Detector de ideologías Lázaro Saavedra, El arte, un arma de lucha
Public mural at G Avenue and 15th Street, Vedado, Havana (destroyed) (Ideological Detector), 1989 (Art, a Weapon for Struggle), 1988
Photograph by Gerardo Mosquera Mixed media Painting
7 3/4 x 7 3/4 x 4 3/4 inches 39 1/4 x 23 1/2 inches
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana

Now, reading my efforts to describe these two performances and, even more, to convey the suffered harsh censorship, as with her untitled performance at the 7th Havana Biennial in
experience that many of us in the audience went through, I realize the difficulty of “reading” 2000, which lasted only one day, or, more dramatically, with Memory of the Postwar I and II,
them because, as Judith Butler would say, these performances “effected realness”: “the impos- the independent art and culture newspaper that she published in Havana in 1993–1994 with
sibility of reading means that the artifice works, the approximation of realness appears to be contributions by Cuban and foreign artists and authors.9 In a country without free press, to
achieved, the body performing and the ideal performed appear indistinguishable.”5 Such fu- publish an underground newspaper with critical content was and is a radical action to under-
sion, which comes from the Situationist notion of suppression and realization of art as two in- take. In a way, it was an endurance performance due to the official hostility, the practical dif-
separable conditions for surpassing it,6 made these two performances extraordinary occurrenc- ficulties, and the lack of resources to make a black market publication in Cuba. The publica-
es that achieved what Bruguera has stated to be her main goal: to work with reality, not with tion gave painful troubles to the artist and was banned and confiscated after its second issue,
representation. “I want people not to look at it [the artwork] but to be in it, sometimes even while some Cubans who participated in the project were detained or fired. Memory of the Post-
without knowing it is art.”7 Being in the art makes it difficult to read, but not to remember as war, which the artist considers part of her arte de conducta (behavior art), can also be seen as
a memory of something that becomes part of your own life experience. The artist has also said cultural activism. However, for Bruguera, real activism cannot be separated from her artistic
that she wants her art to be “an experienced emotion,” and its documentation not to be pho- practice. In these performative actions the body that performs “is the social body,” as the art-
tos or videos, but a “lived memory”—an art to be remembered more than to be seen.8 ist has stated.10 The other way around, in performances like The Burden of Guilt, it is her per-
Political content and action have been intrinsic to Bruguera’s art since its inception. She has forming body that impersonates a social body.

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Bruguera is part of the critical orientation typical of Cuban arts from the mid-1980s un- the 1980s and was very close with and influential to the new Cuban artists.
til today. Beyond its broad international diffusion and impact, her work has to be under- Mendieta’s effect on Bruguera was preceded by her training with Juan Francisco Elso at the
stood from this context. In an unexpected substitution, the lack of civil society, indepen- Elementary School of Art in Havana when she was very young. This remarkable artist, who
dent media, and spaces for discussion in Cuba have been partially compensated by the arts, passed away in 1988 at the age of thirty-two, was paradigmatic of the new Cuban artists’
which—in a tendency that began in the visual arts—have operated as one of the very few mystical and “anthropological” inclination14 in the first half of the 1980s (José Bedia, Ricar-
critical arenas tolerated up to certain limits. In Cuba the formula is: total governmental do Brey, Rubén Torres Llorca). They made installations that were often instruments of an
control over the media, restricted freedom for the arts. Of course, this responds to the arts’ existential experience, using methodologies related to Afro-Cuban religions, and stimulated
minority appeal together with the strong pressure from the intelligentsia, the international the symbolic dimensions of the materials. These methodologies helped them to codify ar-
solidarity that it enjoys, and the regime’s strategy of allowing some criticism that can func- tistic-philosophical discourses of a transcendental telluric nature, using invented rituals and
tion as an escape valve. In any case, Cuba has built a critical culture that has analyzed the carefully structured symbolism. The connection with Mendieta’s silhouettes and body-earth
country’s predicament in depth, from an internalized position, addressing the collapse of works is obvious; there was actually a meaningful intertextuality and exchange between her
its utopian project, the failure of the social hopes that had been so messianically instilled, and these artists. The leading artists who emerged during the second half of the 1980s—
and the nation’s critical situation, among other urgent and relevant issues. Bruguera’s cul- most of the list that Bruguera has mentioned as her main influence—followed an opposing
tural and political activism comes from that context; she is part of a general movement in social and critical approach.
Cuban culture. Elso’s teaching was a projection of his art, and he looked to activate a creative personal ex-
The inclination towards political dissent in Cuban art was introduced by a new generation perience among his disciples, akin to the work just described. Young Bruguera was part
of artists who, in the 1980s, transformed the official modernist, ideology-centered, nation- of this general feeling, and her admiration for Mendieta prompted her to re-enact the Cu-
alistic, conservative status quo of the previous decade, freeing the scene and renewing the ban-American’s performances and earth-body works, to carry out others that Mendieta left
country’s culture. The 1980s are increasingly being considered the Golden Age of Cuban sketched, and to invent other ones. These appropriations and re-enactments were an hom-
art, to the point of becoming a myth. It was a period of very intense, transformative artis- age, a way to make Mendieta known to younger artists in Cuba who at the time ignored
tic energy, and also of conceptual discussion, social criticism, and openness to international her, but also, and more significantly, they were a vicarious procedure to bring Mendieta
trends. An art of ideas prevailed, with neo-conceptual and postmodern slants. Performance, back to her homeland, to Cuban culture, and to life.15 What RoseLee Goldberg called “Bru-
set off in the late 1970s by Leandro Soto, was significant at the time, to the point that Ángel guera’s re-performances,” which she considered an “entirely new approach to performance
Delgado spent six months in jail for defecating at an opening, as part of an unannounced history,”16 were artistic transubstantiations born out of the ritualistic, mystical approach
performance.11 The Havana Biennial was also launched in 1984, establishing Havana as the to art typical of Elso and other Cuban artists in the early 1980s. Even more, they involved
first space where contemporary art from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the the act of possession, the main liturgical moment of Afro-Cuban religions. Possession, typi-
Middle East was exhibited and discussed, pioneering the international art circulation that cal of Sub-Saharan traditional religions, consists of a deity or a spirit taking control of the
we enjoy today and creating a global space for encounter and exchange. worshipper’s body, usually during a ritual dance, to come to this world and express him-
Bruguera was part of the continuation of this artistic process—which has been called the self. Bruguera’s re-performances were artistic-religious possessions, or were loaded with
New Cuban Art12—in the 1990s, when she came into her own as an artist. She has acknowl- their undertones. At the time when she made these appropriations, Bruguera did not know
edged that Cuban artists from the 1980s such as Carlos Cárdenas, Flavio Garciandía, Glexis Mendieta’s early performances, which showed a socially critical feminism more related to
Novoa, Lázaro Saavedra, José Ángel Toirac, and the Arte Calle Group have been “the real Bruguera’s later work. When she discovered them in Mendieta’s retrospective at the Whit-
and most important influence” in her work.13 It is telling that those she mentioned were ney Museum, she expressed her preference for these pieces over the ones that she had re-
some of the most confrontational and politically oriented artists in the 1980s, and that she is enacted.17 Bruguera thus evolved from a mystical poetics to social action, the reverse of
neither referring to the impact of an individual figure on her nor to a formal or poetical in- Mendieta’s path.
tertextuality, but rather to a general spirit of connecting art with society in a real and critical Two crucial events happened in Cuba at the turn of the decade that conditioned the art scene
manner. Another key inspiration was Ana Mendieta, who visited Cuba several times during in the 1990s. One was a repressive backlash as a result of political art going beyond the de-

30 31
 Arte Calle ements of her work were widely developed in international terms by the artist, departing
Performance at the exhibition
Nueve alquimistas y un ciego, from Cuba’s spirit and its seeds during the 1980s.
(Nine Alchemists and A Blind Man), 1988 Bruguera shares her time among Chicago (where she teaches), Cuba, and the greater world.
Courtesy of Ofill Echevaría
She has been included in the top biennials and enjoys broad international demand. Hence,
the great amount of energy and dedication that she devotes to a place like Cuba is admira-
ble—not usually the case with artists from the “peripheries” who reach considerable inter-
national stature. The Cátedra Arte de Conducta (Center for Behavior Art Studies), an ambi-
tious independent workshop program on “studies in political art”19 for young artists in Ha-
vana that was held for seven years with the contribution of leading Cuban and international
Arte Calle artists, curators, and scholars, has been Bruguera’s main project since it opened in January
No queremos intoxicarnos
(We Do Not Want To Be Intoxicated), 1988 2003. Its purpose was to create “an alternative training space focused in the discussion and
Performance at the Unión Nacional analysis of social conduct and the understanding of art as a way of establishing a dialogue
de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba,
(National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists),
with reality and the civic current situation.”20 The Cátedra was the only training program
Havana on performance art in Latin America ever. It played a major artistic and educational role in
Courtesy Cuban Performance Art of the 80s
Cuba by giving young artists the opportunity to work and study for free with figures rang-
(Chronology)
Photograph by Rafael ing from Anri Sala to Nicolas Bourriaud, Boris Groys to Thomas Hirschhorn, Dora Garcia to
Patty Chang, and dozens more. Conceived by Bruguera as a response to the Instituto Superi-
or de Arte’s decadence and some artists’ use of class advantage, she managed to establish and
run an alternative, well-focused, top quality space. Was the Cátedra art or a very effective,
much needed, and well-targeted social, educational, and pedagogical action? For Bruguera it
was Arte de Conducta, and as such it was shown at the last Kwangju Biennial.
Actually, the question is irrelevant since, apart from blurring its frontiers and breaking away
from given morphologies and classifications, a considerable part of contemporary art is tied
gree of criticism that the government was able to tolerate. The other was the artists of the to other activities, which sometimes involve social action and personal relations, or it con-
1980s’ massive diaspora motivated by this new situation and the legal restrictions that were stitutes a diversified process that enters and exits the artistic sphere in certain moments and
hampering their international movement. Critical art did not disappear, but the generation spaces in order to enter and exit others. Certainly there have been many efforts to avoid the
of the 1990s, to which Bruguera belongs, was, in general terms, less poignant in this aspect. self-restriction of art and to grant it more cultural and political significance without dimin-
Bruguera was trans-generational: she took the critical political spirit of the previous genera- ishing the complexity of its discourse. All of these strategies of connecting art with political
tion that had left the country and developed it within the new one. Although, I insist, there action and social activism, education, sociology, psychology, technology, research, personal
was plenty of political art in the 1990s in Cuba, Bruguera was the only artist of that genera- interrelations, or shamanism are plausible, although they often have not been able to go be-
tion who systematically followed a social line throughout her entire career. Back in 1995, I yond representation. In many cases the works suffer the fatalism of art’s fetishization: they
wrote: “Bruguera is always striving to unite artistic practice with life. Sometimes the works tend to be legitimized in restricted, traditional auratic spaces. Worse, sometimes when art-
make social commentaries, but they are always derived from a personal perspective, an inti- ists go out to the social environment it is just to try a particular way of making the work,
mate feeling . . . The social dimension of her work is not only the subject, it is also concrete whose predetermined final destination is the showroom, the publication, or the web, after
action.”18 This early commitment has shaped her work’s very nature until today. Therefore, having been documented for this purpose. Documentation is frequently the super-objective
focus on social issues, arte de conducta, art that commits real actions, collective participation that operates from the project’s very moment of conception, and the work is only the pro-
and creation by the audience, Bruguera’s understanding of authorship, and other crucial el- cess that leads up to it. Too many times, actual social implications and effectiveness fall to

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the background, so the works are generally judged by their artistic-conceptual excellence artistic gesture: it satisfies, even if partially and temporally, actual needs, like freedom of
rather than their real impact on the social context where they unravel, an impact that is not speech or art education in Cuba. But Bruguera always does this in a confrontational way,
measured beyond the anecdote. The structure of the artistic field—highly specialized and to defy and provoke. There are even cases in which the audience to which she gives voice is
intellectualized—based on exhibitions, publications, in-the-know elites, collectionism, and also deceived, as in Responsible for the Fate, in order for the work to transmit a critical message
the luxury market, has not been so radically defied as it seems.21 about history and guilt. In Tatlin’s Whisper #5 (2008), the British mounted police harassed
By intending art to achieve real and necessary social and political actions, Bruguera tries to the audience using mass control techniques. Bruguera’s work is both belligerent and gener-
go beyond these mannerisms. She has also been reluctant to exhibit and sell documentation ous. It stands in opposition to the harmonistic conception of the social that Claire Bishop
about her performances and prefers to sell the right to re-enact them, an action that might has criticized in Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics, pointing to a more confrontational under-
introduce changes to the original work according to the new situation in which it will hap- standing of human relations.23
pen. “What needs to be reproduced,” she has stated, “is not the gesture, not the image that
is the result of the gesture, but the implication of the gesture.”22 This idea corresponds with
her notion of documentation as a living memory, an impression, a feeling that remains with
you after participating in the performative experience. She has even executed this notion in
her piece 46 Days, 46 Performances (2002).
Interestingly, Bruguera is very far from being any sort of street artist or a social or political
militant. She is as concerned with the social aspect of her work as she is with the legitimiza-
tion of her career by the mainstream art world. She is as eager to participate in biennials or
to have museum exhibitions as she is to devote herself to the Cátedra Arte de Conducta. In a
way, she bridges both sides and makes them empower each other. This is true yet in practical 1. Irit Rogoff, “The Implicated – A Model for the Curatorial?,” opening lecture at the Rotterdam Dialogues.
The Curators, Witte de With, Rotterdam, March 5, 2009.
terms: the Cátedra was possible because of her international connections, and at the same 2. Tania Bruguera. Venice: La Biennale di Venezia, 2005, p. 155.
time, it gave Bruguera credentials before the art world. However, her Arte de Conducta is 3. Ibid.
4. Tania Bruguera in conversation with the author in Havana and later through email exchange.
not usually artsy, while her more traditional performances and performance-installations al- 5. Judith Butler, “Gender is Burning. Questions of Appropriation and Subversion,” in Zoya Kocur and Simon Leung (eds.), Theory in
ways have a social content and frequently look for a social aim. Contemporary Art since 1985. Malden, Oxford and Carlton: Blackwell Publishing, 2005, p. 172.
6. Guy Debord, La Sociedad del Espectáculo. Valencia: Pre-Textos, 2000, p. 158.
It might sound exaggerated to say that all of Bruguera’s oeuvre is about Cuba. Naturally, the 7. RoseLee Goldberg and Tania Bruguera, “Interview II,” in Tania Bruguera, Op. cit., p. 29.
8. Ibid., p. 27.
place where artists grow up, receive their education, and initiate their careers will remain
9. Memory of the Postwar (Memoria de la Postguerra) was reproduced in Ibid., pp. 62–104.
a basic foundation from which their art will stem. But in Bruguera’s case, on the one hand, 10. Ibid., p. 31.
11. Glexis Novoa has thoroughly collected information about performance in Cuba during the 1980s.
a great deal of her work is about Cuba thematically, borrows from the island’s culture and 12. About this art see Luis Camnitzer, New Art of Cuba. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994, and Gerardo Mosquera,
history, and has Cuba’s problems as a target. On the other, when addressing non-Cuban sub- “The New Cuban Art,” in Ales Erjavec (ed.), Postmodernism and the Postsocialist Condition. Politicized Art under Late Socialism.
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003, pp. 208–246.
jects, it seems as if her works were conceived and shaped from feelings, positions, and po- 13. RoseLee Goldberg and Tania Bruguera, “Interview II,” in Tania Bruguera, Op. cit., pp. 29–31.
etics whose active base is the very complex and traumatic experience of the artist living the 14. See Rachel Weiss (ed.), Por América. La obra de Juan Francisco Elso. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma
de México and Dirección General de Artes Plásticas, 2000.
failure of utopia in Cuba and its predicaments. We recognize this even in works that can be 15. RoseLee Goldberg and Tania Bruguera, “Interview,” in Tania Bruguera, Op. cit., pp. 15–17; Gerardo Mosquera, “Reanimating
seen as an indirect reaction to German history, like her untitled video-performance-installa- Ana Mendieta,” Poliéster, 4. 11, Winter 1995, pp. 54–55.
16. RoseLee Goldberg, “Regarding Ana,” in Tania Bruguera, Op. cit., p. 8.
tion for Documenta 11, or even in Responsible for the Fate (2004), in which such a reaction is 17. RoseLee Goldberg and Tania Bruguera: “Interview I,” Ibid., pp. 11–13.
18. Gerardo Mosquera, “Reanimating Ana Mendieta,” Op. cit., pp. 53–54.
very concrete and apparent.
19. Estado de Excepción. Arte de Conducta. Havana: Galería Habana, 2008.
Although Bruguera’s work is performative rather than “participative,” a basic component 20. Ibid.
21. Gerardo Mosquera, “Art and Politics: Contradictions, Disjunctives, Possibilities,” Brumaria 8, Spring 2007, pp. 215–219.
of it is to establish grounds for people to take part, interact, and yet more: to express them- 22. RoseLee Goldberg and Tania Bruguera, “Interview II,” in Tania Bruguera, Op. cit., p. 19.
selves, to create and to undertake action. In the best cases, this generosity is more than an 23. Claire Bishop, “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,” October 110, Fall 2004, pp. 51–79.

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