Miami Herald Logo

Fabiola Santiago: Artist's censored effort in Havana offered Cubans a voice | Miami Herald

miami-com Logo

Fabiola Santiago: Artist's censored effort in Havana offered Cubans a voice | Miami Herald

miami-com Logo
×
  • Home
  • Things To Do
  • Food
  • Club + Bars
  • More
    • Where To Stay
    • News
    • LOL
    • En Español
  • E-edition
  • Things To Do
  • Food
  • Club + Bars
  • Where To Stay
  • News
  • LOL
  • En Español

Things To Do

Fabiola Santiago: Artist's censored effort in Havana offered Cubans a voice

By miami staff

    ORDER REPRINT →

January 04, 2015 06:01 AM

If the silence in the Cuban art world (in Miami as well as Havana) seems too maddening for the times, it’s because internationally acclaimed artist Tania Bruguera has shaken — with a powerful, albeit foiled idea — the comfortable established order of co-existence.

For the second time in her dynamic career, this Cuban performance artist has put her art at the service of the Cuban people, offering them what they haven’t had in 56 years: a voice — and an opportunity to speak, if only for one minute, in a public space reserved for the powerful.

Sign Up and Save

Get six months of free digital access to the Miami Herald

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

#ReadLocal

She was arrested in the attempt to stage an “open mike” performance, censored, but not all together silenced.

As Cuban-American artist Xavier Cortada puts it: “It showed the world what all of us know.”

Brava.

For far too long, Cuban artists, curators and their supporters and collectors outside the island have been tiptoeing around the regime, playing by government rules and being rewarded with the privileges of money, fame, connections, worldwide travel and return to the island-home.

Since the late 1980s, artists have tested the limits of censorship, only to obtain the same results: They can only go so far before they’re sidelined, grounded, persecuted — some even arrested — until they leave Cuba for good.

When they do leave, they can’t be perceived to be too hard on the Cuban government — or the liberal environment of the art world will also sideline them. This sad reality has been portrayed to me in many private conversations with Cuban artists throughout the years.

The complicity of silence has been profitable on both sides of the Florida Straits.

Bruguera is one of those privileged Cuban artists with dual status and residences in Havana and New York, a self-described woman of the left, daughter of a Cuban diplomat who was a strong supporter of Fidel Castro until the diplomat died in 2006.

With her stellar record of international exhibitions and critical acclaim, she didn’t have to stage a work of art embraced by dissidents that would so pointedly and surely challenge the Cuban government.

But as she tweeted: “I’ve done it in Occupy Wall Street, in Europe, why not in my own country?”

And so she called on fellow Cubans to turn out to the iconic Revolution Square in Havana at 3 p.m. on Dec. 30 for an open mike performance. To boot, she mounted a social media campaign for the event with the gutsy, combative hashtag #YoTambienExijo (#IAlsoDemand). Maybe par for the course in the free world, but an affront to a dictatorship that systematically tramples on freedom of speech.

It was her second such performance.

During the 2009 Havana Biennial, Bruguera set up a podium and microphone at a Havana venue and gave people one minute to speak. As Cubans and foreign visitors wished for freedoms and rights, a white dove flew on their shoulders, a mockery of what happened during a historic Fidel Castro speech in the early years of the revolution.

She got in trouble for the performance, insiders tell me, and she’s been shuttling between residencies, exhibitions, and teaching gigs in New York, France, Germany and Havana since then.

Unlike the Biennial, this time the government made sure Bruguera couldn’t carry out her performance.

She was arrested before she could get to the square, and two more times in two days. She was reportedly released Friday. Dissidents and activists also were arrested so that they could not participate in the event. Some have been released; others have not.

Sadly, only three Cuban artists on the island signed a petition that had hundreds of other signatures calling for Bruguera’s release. And in Miami, some artists and curators have privately criticized the boldness of her work.

“If artists self-censor themselves, then they’re no longer creating art, they’re not engaging in exchange,” says Cortada, who recently participated in a Key West-Cuba show. “They are simply helping the apparatus of censorship. … Art is about truth, so hay que decir las verdades!” Truths need to be told.

One of the issues of concern is the timing of the performance — and the context of the new, friendlier relationship with the United States.

It’s not a stretch to say that the Cuban government’s crackdown may have cooled again the U.S.-Cuba thaw that people like Bruguera had sought for so long to gain. Ironic, perhaps even unfortunate, and certainly uncomfortable for the State Department talks that are supposed to take place at the end of the month, but well worth it.

The stark Cuban reality was a missing component of the sudden, confident change in policy.

After all, despite the hoopla the Cuban government has generated with its censorship, Bruguera’s intervention was simply art. It’s part of her “Immigrant Movement International” project, which entails “appropriation of political strategies, an art form — arte útil, useful art, or art as tool — that she has helped shape with art partners at the Queens Museum and in Europe.

Her work — exhibited in Miami during Art Basel and at major contemporary art museums, including the Guggenheim in New York, which invited people on social media to follow the #YoTambienExijo performance — has always packed social and political punch.

This time, the Cuban government may have turned off her microphone before she even installed it, but the results of Bruguera’s experimental art have spoken louder.

For a change, a Cuban artist has gone too far.

Brava.

  Comments  

Videos

Five Americans arrested in Haiti fly back to the U.S.

Americans arrested in Haiti arrive to Miami

View More Video

Trending Stories

It’s not so hard for an immigrant to become a U.S. citizen. Here’s what you have to do

February 20, 2019 01:20 PM

Why were former members of the U.S. military driving around Haiti heavily armed?

February 19, 2019 07:49 PM

Think Florida is a ‘sinful’ place to live? You’re right, according to this new study

February 20, 2019 01:18 PM

Americans arrested in Haiti driving around with an arsenal are flown to the U.S.

February 20, 2019 06:54 PM

Cuts are coming for Dolphins’ receivers, but there’s one their new coach raves about

February 19, 2019 12:31 PM

Read Next

Calling all lords and ladies! Here’s how to ball out at the Renaissance Festival

Things To Do

Calling all lords and ladies! Here’s how to ball out at the Renaissance Festival

By Amy Reyes

    ORDER REPRINT →

February 16, 2019 11:20 AM

Want to live like a lord or a lady at the Florida Renaissance Festival? Here is the best way to be a big baller at the medieval festival taking place in Deerfield Beach through March 24.

KEEP READING

Sign Up and Save

#ReadLocal

Get six months of free digital access to the Miami Herald

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

MORE THINGS TO DO

The Citadel food hall opens this weekend. Here are the 5 best things we had there

Miami com

The Citadel food hall opens this weekend. Here are the 5 best things we had there

February 15, 2019 03:19 PM
Want to go on a cruise with Cardi B and Post Malone? DJ Khaled is making it happen

News

Want to go on a cruise with Cardi B and Post Malone? DJ Khaled is making it happen

February 15, 2019 01:24 PM
These chefs aren’t TV stars, but their South Beach food fest events are hot tickets

Food

These chefs aren’t TV stars, but their South Beach food fest events are hot tickets

February 15, 2019 11:37 AM
Miami hosts the biggest Hispanic LGBTQ street party in the country this weekend

Things To Do

Miami hosts the biggest Hispanic LGBTQ street party in the country this weekend

February 13, 2019 04:47 PM
Hialeah bucket list: All the things you need to do in Hialeah before you die

Miami com

Hialeah bucket list: All the things you need to do in Hialeah before you die

February 12, 2019 09:00 AM
You’re stressed out, Miami. Go find your inner peace at the Morikami gardens

Miami com

You’re stressed out, Miami. Go find your inner peace at the Morikami gardens

February 12, 2019 01:33 PM
Take Us With You

Real-time updates and all local stories you want right in the palm of your hand.

Icon for mobile apps

Miami Herald App

View Newsletters

Subscriptions
  • Start a Subscription
  • Customer Service
  • eEdition
  • Vacation Hold
  • Pay Your Bill
  • Rewards
Learn More
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletters
  • News in Education
  • Public Insight Network
  • Reader Panel
Advertising
  • Place a Classified
  • Media Kit
  • Commercial Printing
  • Public Notices
Copyright
Commenting Policy
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service


Back to Story