Beschreibung:

Tania Bruguera Destierro (Displacement) 1998-2003 sculptural suit, Cuban mud and nails 78 x 32 x 24 in. (198.1 x 81.3 x 61 cm)
Provenance Private Collection, Connecticut Rhona Hoffman Gallery, New York Exhibited Caracas, Museo de Bellas Artes, III Bienal Barro de América, 1998 Havana, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam Obsesiones, 1998 California, Iturralde Gallery, Lo que me corresponde, January 5 - February 20, 1999 New York, Watermill Foundation, Molino Cubano, August 3, 2003 Dublin, Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Hours - Visual Arts in Contemporary Latin America, October 5, 2005 - January 15, 2006 Germany, Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Tania Bruguera Installation / Performances, July 22 - September 17, 2006 New York, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, Transfigured Worlds: Kongo Power Figure and Bruguera's Displacement Costume, January 28 - April 11, 2010 Literature H. Herzog, The Hours - Visual Arts in Contemporary Latin America, Dublin, 2005 H. Posner, G. Mosquera, C. Lambert-Beatty, Tania Bruguera On the Political Imaginary, New York, 2010, p.70 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay The present lot, Displacement, 1998-1999, embodies one of Tania Bruguera’s exemplary performances within her oeuvre and epitomizes what her body of work is ultimately about: extraordinary, sometimes extreme, physical and psychological feats of endurance, imbued with political content that explores the issues of exile, displacement and instability amongst others. With performative pieces such as Displacement, 1998-1999, the artist intends for her audience to internalize them so that they become part of their own experience, a “lived memory”, blurring the boundaries between art and life. More importantly, art serves as testimony for Bruguera, an ethical social commitment that, as she aptly states, “[has] to be completely linked with life and not a fiction or virtual reality, but as alive as possible. My art has to have a real function for myself, to heal my problems or to help other people to reflect and improve…” At the age of twelve Tania Bruguera had already begun studying art at the Escuela Elemental de Artes Plásticas in Havana, where she was exposed to interdisciplinary and experimental practices. Around this time the pioneering 1984 Havana Biennial opened providing a global space for contemporary art from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Middle East to be discussed and exchanged. Bruguera and her artist colleagues inherited this experimental context in the 1990s, resulting in the emergence of a new generation commonly referred to as New Cuban Art. It was during this time that Bruguera consolidated her unique performative brand of art, in which she chose to work with the real and the present, rather than with traditional modes of representation. Her performances often reflect a biting critique of Cuban life since the supposed triumph of the revolution. Yet Bruguera also went beyond her generation’s concerns, as she incorporated the political spirit of her exiled artistic predecessors and developed it into her own fresh brand of activism. It was partly because of performances like Bruguera’s that there was a repressive backlash in the Cuban art scene, largely because the art went beyond the degree of criticism that the government tolerated. Thus, the late 1990s were a critical moment for Bruguera, when she questioned her identity and what it meant to be Cuban, if “being Cuban [means] solely living here, or whether it signified a condition beyond borders”. (Helaine Posner, Tania Bruguera – On the Political Imaginary, 2009, p. 21). The transgressive identity politics and her criticism of Cuban society is precisely what allowed her art’s importance to extend beyond its national borders and placed Bruguera at the forefront of international contemporary art. Bruguera’s work was also influenced by artist Juan Francisco Elso Padilla, one of her instructors at the Escuela de Artes in Havana, who was a pioneer in experimental art pedagogy and was also part of the first generation of progressive political dissent in Cuba. Padi