Tania Bruguera

Tania Bruguera was born in 1968 in Havana, Cuba. Bruguera, a politically motivated performance artist, explores the relationship between art, activism, and social change in works that examine the social effects of political and economic power. By creating proposals and aesthetic models for others to use and adapt, she defines herself as an initiator rather than an author, and often collaborates with multiple institutions as well as many individuals so that the full realization of her artwork occurs when others adopt and perpetuate it.

She expands the definition and range of performance art, sometimes performing solo but more often staging participatory events and interactions that build on her own observations, experiences, and interpretations of the politics of repression and control. Bruguera has explored both the promise and failings of the Cuban Revolution in performances that provoke viewers to consider the political realities masked by government propaganda and mass-media interpretation. Advancing the concept of arte útil (literally, useful art; art as a benefit and a tool), she proposes solutions to sociopolitical problems through the implementation of art, and has developed long-term projects that include a community center and a political party for immigrants, and a school for behavior art.

Tania Bruguera attended art schools in Havana, including the Instituto Superior de Arte (1987-92), and received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2001). She received a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship (1998), and has been awarded residencies at Skowhegan (2002); Headlands Centers for the Arts (1998); Fundación Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Maracay (1998); Art in General (1997); and ART/OMI (1995). Major exhibitions of her work have appeared at the Van Abbemuseum (2014); Queens Museum (2013); National Museum Wales (2012); Havana Biennial (2010, 2003, 2000); Neuberger Museum of Art (2010); Venice Biennale (2009, 2001); Tate Modern (2008); Moscow Biennial (2007); Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2006); Shanghai Biennial (2004); Istanbul Biennial (2003); Documenta (2002); San Francisco Art Institute (2002); SITE Santa Fe Biennial (1999) and the São Paulo Bienal (1996). Tania Bruguera lives and works in Queens, New York.

Links:
Artist’s website
Immigrant Movement International

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Teaching with Contemporary Art

Creating Communities of Care in the Early Childhood Art University Classroom

How do we create the kind of caring communities that make our lives better, happier, and even in some cases, possible? What kind of infrastructures are necessary to create communities that care? As a Los Angeles educator working with high school visual art students and university art education students, I’ve been experimenting with ways to […]

Conversation Starter

How can art be a tool for civic engagement?

Investigating stories of silenced or marginalized communities, artists have employed their practices as tools for effecting change.

Interview

Defining an Artist

Tania Bruguera explains the term Arte Útil in relationship to the social responsibility of art. Interview by Susan Sollins at the Queens Museum in Queens, New York, on March 24, 2014.

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Communicating en Masse: The Art of Activism

Educator-in-Residence Nick Kozak offers politically neutral ways of teaching on protest art and activism in the classroom.

Deep Focus

On “Monument Lab”

Artist and co-curator of “Monument Lab” Ken Lum shares the findings of this public engagement project, which served as a participatory exercise in spatial production, and questioned the role of monuments and public art in civic spaces.

Teaching with Contemporary Art

Keep it Real, Keep it Relevant

Educator-in-Residence Joseph Iacona shares the impact socially engaged artists have in classrooms with trauma-impacted students.


Galleries

“A lot of people know it’s impossible…but the impossible is only impossible until somebody makes it possible.”

Tania Bruguera