Born in Havana in 1968, Tania BRUGUERA studied at the Escuela Elemental de Artes Plásticas 20 de Octubre and the Instituto Superior de Arte de La Habana. After settling in Chicago, she did a Masters in performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she also later taught, between 2003 and 2010.
Bruguera uses performance, action, installation, video and a wide range of media to analyse the nature and effects of economic and political power on the most vulnerable individuals and peoples. Conceptually based, her outlook is not centred on the idea, but on the capacity to mobilise critics and bring social change, revolving around expanded poetics that requires a multiplicity of co-authors, and which she herself calls “Useful Art”.
“As an artist I’ve been looking into the ways in which Art can be applied to day-to-day politics, not only as a device for people to reflect upon themselves, but also as a way of generating and putting into place models of social interaction that can lead to new ways of relating to utopia. (...) In my work, I present various ways of delegating authorship. Not only does one negotiate with the public the responsibility for the work in terms of the documenting process for it, and how it is eventually completed; one also, at times, asks the public itself to create the work.”
Since her first interventions in the 90s, in the context of the Castro dictatorship, her interest in highlighting the oppression of the system and the fatality of borders was clear. This would reappear with even greater force in her later work. El peso de la culpa (1997-99), in which the artist ate dirt in a most moving reminder of how Cuban indigenous peoples committed suicide, choosing to kill themselves, overwhelmed as they were at their inability to cope with Spanish occupation, is one of the most emblematic works of that period. Sin título, presented for the first time in Havana in 2000, takes place in the bowels of an asphyxiating tunnel in which the audience is obliged to walk in darkness along a cane reed floor, contemplating on a small screen in the background a triumphant-looking Fidel Castro. It caused such a stir that the installation was only allowed open for a day. Later re-staged in Kassel (2002), Moscow (2007), Bogota (2009), Palestine (2010) and at the Venice Biennale (2015), Sin título has unceasingly highlighted the humiliation of the suppressed in different contexts.
Developed between 2002 and 2009, Cátedra de arte de la conducta was born as a public art project aimed at creating an alternative training forum within the system of art studios in contemporary Cuba. Defined as a “site and political-time specific” work, it set out to create a pedagogic model designed to make up for the shortcomings of those places that were available for civic discussion, analysing different types of power tyranny and pushing for greater public involvement and the exploration of the relation between art and context. As tangible enactment of this, in 2008 she had two mounted policemen enter the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern Museum, bringing audiences face to face with the repression of authority, forcing them to think about a response. Created for the X Bienal de La Habana, El susurro de Tatlin #6 (2009), invited people to speak freely for a minute on a raised platform, giving them the freedom they don’t enjoy under a totalitarian regime. After a new performance of this in 2015 in Havana the artist was arrested.
In 2010, Bruguera created the Immigrant Movement International (IMI), an ambitious project that offers different services to immigrants and explores the output capacity of conceptual art within the existential arena of social exclusion and marginalisation. Faithful to her idea of advocating the practice of dialogue, socially compromised dialogue, Bruguera chose to forego final authorial tenancy of the work, as envisaged within the conceptual rationale of the RE-ACTION project, granting it to the children attending the art workshops offered by IMI in New York.
Indefatigable traveller, Bruguera has exhibited at important international artistic venues and has been granted, among other things, the Guggenheim Fellowship; the Meadows Prize (Dallas, USA) and the Prince Claus Award.
Tania Bruguera works and lives between Havana (Cuba) and NY (USA).
Bruguera uses performance, action, installation, video and a wide range of media to analyse the nature and effects of economic and political power on the most vulnerable individuals and peoples. Conceptually based, her outlook is not centred on the idea, but on the capacity to mobilise critics and bring social change, revolving around expanded poetics that requires a multiplicity of co-authors, and which she herself calls “Useful Art”.
“As an artist I’ve been looking into the ways in which Art can be applied to day-to-day politics, not only as a device for people to reflect upon themselves, but also as a way of generating and putting into place models of social interaction that can lead to new ways of relating to utopia. (...) In my work, I present various ways of delegating authorship. Not only does one negotiate with the public the responsibility for the work in terms of the documenting process for it, and how it is eventually completed; one also, at times, asks the public itself to create the work.”
Since her first interventions in the 90s, in the context of the Castro dictatorship, her interest in highlighting the oppression of the system and the fatality of borders was clear. This would reappear with even greater force in her later work. El peso de la culpa (1997-99), in which the artist ate dirt in a most moving reminder of how Cuban indigenous peoples committed suicide, choosing to kill themselves, overwhelmed as they were at their inability to cope with Spanish occupation, is one of the most emblematic works of that period. Sin título, presented for the first time in Havana in 2000, takes place in the bowels of an asphyxiating tunnel in which the audience is obliged to walk in darkness along a cane reed floor, contemplating on a small screen in the background a triumphant-looking Fidel Castro. It caused such a stir that the installation was only allowed open for a day. Later re-staged in Kassel (2002), Moscow (2007), Bogota (2009), Palestine (2010) and at the Venice Biennale (2015), Sin título has unceasingly highlighted the humiliation of the suppressed in different contexts.
Developed between 2002 and 2009, Cátedra de arte de la conducta was born as a public art project aimed at creating an alternative training forum within the system of art studios in contemporary Cuba. Defined as a “site and political-time specific” work, it set out to create a pedagogic model designed to make up for the shortcomings of those places that were available for civic discussion, analysing different types of power tyranny and pushing for greater public involvement and the exploration of the relation between art and context. As tangible enactment of this, in 2008 she had two mounted policemen enter the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern Museum, bringing audiences face to face with the repression of authority, forcing them to think about a response. Created for the X Bienal de La Habana, El susurro de Tatlin #6 (2009), invited people to speak freely for a minute on a raised platform, giving them the freedom they don’t enjoy under a totalitarian regime. After a new performance of this in 2015 in Havana the artist was arrested.
In 2010, Bruguera created the Immigrant Movement International (IMI), an ambitious project that offers different services to immigrants and explores the output capacity of conceptual art within the existential arena of social exclusion and marginalisation. Faithful to her idea of advocating the practice of dialogue, socially compromised dialogue, Bruguera chose to forego final authorial tenancy of the work, as envisaged within the conceptual rationale of the RE-ACTION project, granting it to the children attending the art workshops offered by IMI in New York.
Indefatigable traveller, Bruguera has exhibited at important international artistic venues and has been granted, among other things, the Guggenheim Fellowship; the Meadows Prize (Dallas, USA) and the Prince Claus Award.
Tania Bruguera works and lives between Havana (Cuba) and NY (USA).