Utopia/Post-utopia: Conceptual Photography and Video from Cuba
Helaine Posner
December 2003
From: Posner, Helaine “Utopia/Post-Utopia: Conceptual Photography and Video from Cuba,” December, 2003. Ed. State Univ. of New York Pr., New York, United States.
ISBN 1438431244 ISBN 9781438431246
Utopia/Post-Utopia: Conceptual Photography and Video from Cuba
Helaine Posner
Guest Curator
Multi-media artist Tania Bruguera explores such issues as power and submission, emigration and displacement, in works that are both visceral and highly poetic. Her video-installation La Isla en Peso (Island Burden), 2001 is a response to the poem of the same name by the noted Cuban writer Virgilio Pinera in which he records the events of a single day and describes the chaos, agony, and beauty of Cuba. On eight video monitors, Bruguera performs eight forceful gestures of self-inflicted silence – each representing a verse in Pinera’s poem. According to the artist, “My work has always been in between the political and the human. From an early age you are raised here with the idea that your individual life has repercussions in the collective and that one must have social responsibility. I always wanted to create responsible work whether the subject was immigration, fear or guilt.”
Utopia/Post-Utopia: Conceptual Photography and Video from Cuba will open at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at the State University of New York at New Paltz in July, 2003 and will be on view through November. The majority of works in this exhibition will be seen in this country for the first time and will offer a fresh perspective on art and life in Cuba. Utopia/Post-Utopia will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue including essays by curator Helaine Posner and by Cuban art critic Eugenio Valdes Figueroa.