Episode 35: Coco Fusco on the State of Free Expression in Cuba
Courtesy of Evelyn Sosa
“There have always been tensions between intellectuals and cultural producers in Cuba and the state. The degree of that tension…and the tactics used by the government to control that tension have changed.”
-Coco Fusco
In the latest episode of Art Persists, we speak to interdisciplinary artist and writer Coco Fusco.
Coco talks to us in depth about the historic oppression of artists in Cuba, which has accelerated since 2018 when the government introduced laws that stifle freedom of expression within the country. She tells us about her activism, advocating for the release of imprisoned artists in Cuba including her friend and fellow artist, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who has been imprisoned since July 2021. Coco also tells us more about her interdisciplinary work and writing and reflects on how the art scene has changed since the 80s.
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About
Coco Fusco is an interdisciplinary artist and writer. She is a Professor of Art at Cooper Union. Fusco is a recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, Latinx Art Award, a Fulbright fellowship and a Herb Alpert Award in the Arts. Fusco's performances and videos have been presented in the 56th Venice Biennale, Frieze Special Projects, Basel Unlimited, three Whitney Biennials (2022, 2008 and 1993), and several other international exhibitions. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Walker Art Center, the Centre Pompidou, the Imperial War Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona. She is represented by Mendes Wood DM.
Fusco is the author of Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba (2015), English is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas (1995), The Bodies That Were Not Ours (2001) and A Field Guide for Female Interrogators (2008). Tomorrow I Will Become an Island, a solo retrospective of Fusco’s works opened at Berlin’s KW Institute of Contemporary Art in September 2023, accompanied by a monograph published by Thames & Hudson.
Learn more about her work: https://www.cocofusco.com/
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