the Cooper Union School of Art Interdisciplinary Seminar
Tania Bruguera
Del Arte Util (On Useful Art)
This lecture took place on April 20th, 2009 at 7:00 pm in the Wollman Auditorium at the Cooper Union
Lecture introduction
Tania Bruguera is a political and interdisciplinary artist whose works focus on the relationship between art, politics and life and on the creation of useful art. In her pieces, art is conceived as an experience to be walked through and as a space for the realization of utopian projects. Bruguera is particularly interested in the insertion of art into everyday political life. Since 2002 (with the
creation of Catedra Arte de Conducta, an alternative art school project in Havana), she has embarked on a series of projects in which she works towards appropriating the structures and resources of power rather than just the language. Bruguera is no longer interested in merely representing political situations but in creating them by putting into motion some of the same strategies used by political powers. Her work, often of an ephemeral nature because of the use of live actions and/or fragile materials, reflects the similarly ephemeral condition of any political truth.
About Tania Bruguera
Tania Bruguera is an interdisciplinary artist working on political issues primarily through behavior art, performance, installation and video. She has been a participant in Documenta, Performa, two Venice, Gwangju and Havana Bienales. Her work has also been exhibited at major museums in Europe and United States including the Tate Modern, The Whitechapel Gallery,PS1, the ZKM, IVAM, Kunsthalle Wien and The New Museum of Contemporary Art. Her work is part of the collection of the Tate Modern; Museum für Moderne Kunst; Daros Foundation; Museum of Modern Art; Museo del Barrio; Bronx Museum; IVAM; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam. In 1998 she was selected as a Guggenheim fellow (United States) and in 2008 she received the Prince Claus Prize. Bruguera was featured in “Art and Today”; “ART NOW Vol. 2”; “Fresh Cream”; “Performance Live Art Since 1960’s; “Art Tomorrow”. She has been written about in The New York Times, Le Monde, Artforum, Flash Art, Art Nexus, Beaux Arts, Performance Research, Kunstforum among others. She received her MFAs from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (United States) and Instituto Superior de Arte (Cuba). She currently lives and works between Chicago, Paris and Havana. She is the founder / director of Arte de Conducta, the first performance studies program in Latin America, hosted by Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana and is visiting faculty at Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris and an Assistant Professor at The University of Chicago, United States.