ART CITIES:San Francisco-Tania Bruguera
Tania Bruguera researches ways in which art can be applied to everyday political life, focusing on the transformation of social affect into political effectiveness. 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.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
For more than 30 years Bruguera has worked at the intersection of activism and performance art to address structures of power, devise new utopian models of authority, and create alternative structures that aim to transform and redistribute power. This has resulted in art projects that take the form of social movements, newspapers, and schools, and even Bruguera’s own provocative self-nomination for the 2018 Cuban presidential election. The exhibition “Talking to Power/Hablándole al Poder” at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) presents together for the first time Bruguera’s long-term projects initiated between 1985 and 2017 that have sought to transform the emotional and symbolic affect of art into political effectiveness. As part of the exhibition, the artist also opens a school in YBCA’s galleries. The “Escuela de Arte Útil” convenes weekly classes, taught by Bruguera and other prominent artist-educators, on topics such as systems of power and creative dissent. Bruguera says: “The threat of the Trump presidency puts basic assumptions about the identity of this country at risk, and has made the political role of art even more urgent. The exhibition at YBCA will offer a space where art’s role as a provocation and as a witness will be exercised. This is more relevant than ever, as art allows us to say and do what cannot be said or done under systems of repression and violence”. The exhibition traces the evolution and practice of these concepts, beginning with “Homenaje a Ana Mendieta” (1985-96), where Bruguera re-performed many of Mendieta’s works in order to re-locate her in the Cuban cultural and artistic imaginary. The presentation continues with “Memoria de la Postguerra I, II, III” (1993/1994/2003), in which Bruguera created an independent newspaper as a work of art in collaboration with contemporary artists and critics living in Cuba and abroad. “Immigrant Movement International” (2010– ) is an artist-initiated sociopolitical movement that has created a community center for immigrants, and “The Francis Effect” (2014– ) is a political campaign asking Pope Francis to extend Vatican City citizenship to undocumented people throughout the world. At YBCA Bruguera will update “Immigrant Movement International” with the launch of “The Party of Migrant People’s Assembly”, a series of conversations with immigrant rights organizations in the Bay Area and internationally, with the aim of finding concrete solutions in these extremely divisive times. Additional highlights include “#YoTambienExijo” (2014– ), a civil platform that peacefully promotes civil, political, economic, and cultural rights in Cuba. Continuing Bruguera’s concept of the “updating” of long-term, socially engaged performances, the exhibition organizes the newly commissioned project “Escuela de Arte Útil” (2017) a fully functioning school held inside YBCA’s galleries. Based on the model of her earlier “Cátedra Arte de Conducta” (2003-09), which took place at her home in Havana, Bruguera has designed a new curriculum for YBCA and the Bay Area that uses the concept of “Arte Útil” (Useful art) but goes further, suggesting art as a tool or device to address the challenges facing artists today, and to explore how art can be an instrument for social and political change. Throughout the eight-week duration of the school, students meet three times a week to learn about the concept of Useful art from influential practitioners and theorists, including: Jeanne van Heeswijk, Alistair Hudson, Rick Lowe, Ted Purves, Strike Debt Collective, WochenKlausur and Tania Bruguera. This public art project will be divided into lectures and workshops, and will end with an exhibition of arte útil projects generated by the students.
Info: Curators: Lucía Sanromán and Susie Kantor, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), 701 Mission Street, San Francisco, Duration: 16/6-29/10/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri-Sun 11:00-18:00, Thu 11:00-20:00, https://ybca.org
