Tania Bruguera
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Welcome to This Cultural Life, the series in which some of the world's leading artistic figures reveal the influences and experiences that have most inspired their own creativity. I'm John Wilson, and my guest in this episode is the Cuban-born performance and conceptual artist Tania Bruguera. Her work explores freedom of speech, political oppression and social justice, often encouraging her audiences to become active participants in her performances, blurring the boundaries between art and viewer. Bruguera has exhibited at international museums, including MoMA and the Guggenheim in New York, and at Tate Modern in London, where she made a major work for the annual Turbine Hall Commission. A new artwork of hers is currently on show in the inaugural exhibition at V&A East.
Throughout her career in her homeland, Tania Bruguera has been repeatedly censored, arrested and detained by the Cuban authorities because of her political activism. She now lives in the U.S., where she's a senior lecturer at Harvard University. Tania Bruguera, welcome to This Cultural Life.
Thank you so much for inviting me.
You are a Cuban artist, of course, and so much of your work is about your homeland. And yet you're talking to us today from Boston in the US, where you live and work. I think you left Cuba in 2021. What is your current relationship with Cuba? Are you in enforced exile, in effect?
Yes, I am indeed. Cuba has a long tradition, even before the Revolution of 59, of censorship and dictators. We are like 120 years old country and we had already four dictators. We barely know democracy, I can say. So yes, I came here in 2021 after being one of the leaders, I don't know how to call it, who put together a group of more than 500 artists. to go and demand in front of the Ministry of Culture the liberation of some of our colleagues.
Well, I'll be exploring your political situation later in the programme. But let's start by retracing your artistic life and journey. You were born in Havana in 1968, a very turbulent time in Cuban history.
Beautiful year, also, in the world.
Your first choice of creative influence that you've chosen for this cultural life is the Cuban Revolution, which happened over several years and, as you say, culminated in 1959 in a new revolutionary government.
Joyous followers of Fidel Castro sweep triumphantly through the Cuban capital hours after their rebellion had toppled the regime of Fulgencio Batista. The 26th of July refers to that day in 1953 when Castro began his long struggle to overthrow the dictator Batista with an abortive armed attack.
Tell me about the family that you were born into.
I was born the year after Che Guevara died, so this is why I'm called Tania. A lot of people born in 68 were either called Ernesto for Che Guevara or Tania for Tania, the gorilla girl who accompanied him. And my father was part of the government. He was at some point an ambassador to the Middle East, Lebanon, Jordan and Kuwait. And then he was an ambassador in Panama and then in Argentina. So he was very close to the government.
And you traveled with him. You were traveling around the world as a child.
Yes, and actually that defined my work because I lived until I was 11 years old outside of Cuba in this kind of fantastic image of what Cuba and the revolution was. And then as a teenager, I come back to Cuba and realize things are quite different from what I heard.
I think you returned to Cuba in 1979. How different was the country to the one that you had, I suppose, imagined it to be from afar?
It was quite different because I encountered students in my class that were extremely poor, living, let's say, a family of ten or nine people in one room with very difficult access to absolutely everything from clothing to food. And of course, my life was different because I live in a good apartment, didn't have that much scarcity at that point. And it was very disturbing to me also because one of my best friends at the school said, The family decided to leave the country, and they obliged us, the students at the school, we were like 11, some were 10 or 9, to go in front of this person's house who was my best friend and throw stones and eggs into their house and shout horrible slogans to him and his family.
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