COCO FUSCO TWILIGHT

A selection of recent video projects by internationally acclaimed interdisciplinary artist and writer Coco Fusco will be on view this fall at The Ringling. Organized by The Ringling, Coco Fusco: Twilight will feature signature videos, including the world premiere of two new works---a video and an outdoor sculpture—that respond to the current political and social climate in Cuba as it transitions to a post-Castro era, and comment on the current state of US politics. Both new works are the result of a commission awarded to Fusco as winner of the 2016 Greenfield Prize at the Hermitage Artist Retreat.

For the past three decades, Fusco has been researching and creating works about Cuba. These have included videos, performances, and texts. Her most recent book, Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba (2015) is an analysis of social commentary in post-Revolutionary Cuban performance art.

Twilight offers more recent video works that meditate on Cuban society in a time of political uncertainty. Taken together, they reflect on the 1959 Cuban Revolution’s failure to live up to its promises under the Castro regime and the Cuban state’s legacy of suppressing dissent. The Empty Plaza (2012) explores the massive Plaza de la Revolución in Havana. Ostensibly a public space for assembly, the plaza lies conspicuously vacant a year after similar spaces were the sites for democratic movements during the Arab Spring.

The Confession (2015), a video created for the 56th Venice Biennale, concerns the government’s imprisonment of Cuban poet Heberto Padilla in 1971 and Padilla’s later public “confession” that he had betrayed the Revolution. Fusco explores newly uncovered government documents that provide insight into the “Padilla Affair” that drew international condemnation upon the Cuban state. In La botella al mar de María Elena (The Message in a Bottle from Maria Elena) (2015), Fusco presents the recollections of poet María Elena Cruz Varela who was attacked by mobs and arrested after coauthoring a public declaration for political reforms in 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union.

As part of Twilight, Fusco will premiere her newest video project, Vivir en junio con la lengua afuera (To Live in June with Your Tongue Hanging Out) (2018). This work was realized as part of her 2016 Greenfield Prize award and continues her investigation of the intersection of culture and politics in Cuba. The video features the actors Lynn Cruz and Iris Ruiz, and poet Amuary Pacheco, all of whom have experienced harassment and censorship by the Cuban government for their work. Vivir en junio reflects on the life of Cuban author Reinaldo Arenas (1943-1990), who was imprisoned and persecuted for his homosexuality and criticism of the Castro regime.

In addition to the video works featured in Twilight, The Ringling will unveil a new sculpture by Fusco entitled Tin Man of the Twenty-First Century—a socialist realist style monumental statue that comments on current US leadership.This new work is part of the tradition of artists engaging in political satire, comparable to Honoré Daumier’s famous caricatures mocking French King Louis Philippe’s excesses and abuses of power in the nineteenth century.

Presenting Tin Man of the Twenty-First Century, in concert with Fusco’s work on Cuba as part of Twilight, is a powerful reminder of the importance of dissent and freedom of expression in an open, democratic society.

Art of Our Time is supported by Gulf Coast