Monthly Archives: July 2020

In 2016, the Museum of Modern Art acquired one of Tania Brugueras most famous works, Untitled (Havana 2000), which debuted at the 7th Havana Biennial. The theme of that exhibition was Closer to One Another, an exploration of mass communication since the new millennia. The artist had set up her presentation inside amilitary vault within the Cabaa Fortress, which had historically been a site where Cuban counterrevolutionaries were imprisoned, tortured, and in some cases even killed. Visitorswere met with a quietly explosive piece: a vast, darkened space, its floor lined with milled sugarcane.

As viewers made their way through the darkened space, they would discover nude male performers seeming to scratch themselves while a video of Fidel Castro played on a tiny monitor. With its provocative critique of the strange power dynamics that guide life in post-revolution Havana, the work embodies Brugueras practice, which often involves provoking viewers into considering visible and invisible means of governmental oppression.

Bruguera was born in 1968 in Havana, Cuba, where she observed failings of the Cuban revolution, which gave way to economic hardship, creative censorship, and unchecked forms of power for officials. At the age of 12, she enrolled at the Escuela Elemental de Artes Plsticas in Havana; her mother, according to Bruguera, believed it would keep her daughter out of trouble. Brugueras early work focused on her own body as a site for social critique, often by subjecting herself to physical pain. In the 1996 performance, titled Studio Study,a nude Bruguera stood atop a high pedestal while pinned to the wall by metal restraints buffered by cotton. In her hands were slabs of raw meat.

In time, Bruguera expanded the definition of performance art into participatory events. Her audiencessometimes unknowinglybecame her collaborators. She has staged elaborate performances with institutions that have garnered her a Guggenheim fellowship in 1998 and a showcase at the Venice Biennale in 2015. In 2003 she developed the notion of arte til, roughly translating to useful artart that transcends representation to offer practical solutions to social issues. Art and ethics cannot be separated in this practice, Bruguera once said. They are interdependent, they define each other.Such art has invited backlash from the Cuban government, who regularly curtail her performances. Bruguera was arrested three times between December 2014 and January 2015, and was detained most recently last month en route to a Black Lives Matter protest in Havana.

Below is a guide to some of Brugueras most incisive performances.

Tribute to Ana Mendieta (Homenaje a Ana Mendieta), 198596

Among Brugueras most provactive early works are her site-specific reenactments of performances and unrealized projects by Ana Mendieta, the feminist Cuban artist who fell to her death in 1985 at the age of 36. Bruguera started by producing these reenactments for her thesis at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, and she continued doing them for the next 10 years, re-creating works such as Mendietas famed series Siluetas (Silhouettes), from 197381. Mendietas practice centered the spiritual marriage of abstract female forms and earth, and in the Siluetas, she left imprints and made carvings of her body into the earth, decorating the silhouettes with natural materialssuch as twigs, flowers, fire, and even animal hearts.

Bruguera performed her tribute to Mendieta in Havana, during a period where a heightened number of Cubans were immigrating to the United States. The act symbolically reclaimed Mendieta, who experienced a traumatic migration to the U.S. as a child and who has traditionally been considered largely with respect to U.S. art history, for Cubas artistic heritage.

El peso de la culpa (The Burden of Guilt), 1997

Bruguera debuted this performance in 1997 at her home in Havana as part of the series titled Memorias de la posguerra (Memories After the War). During the performance, which spanned roughly an hour, a nude Bruguera slowly consumed native soil mixed with salt water meant to symbolize tears. Throughout, a headless lamb carcass hung around her neck. The act was an allusion to the myth that, during the Spanish colonization of Cuba, Indigenous people ate nothing but dirt, a choice of death over captivity.

Eating dirt, which is sacred and a symbol of permanence, is like swallowing ones own traditions, ones own heritage, its like erasing oneself, electing suicide as a way of defending oneself, Bruguera said of the performance. What I did was take this historical anecdote and update it to the present. In later versions of the performance, a Cuban flag woven from human hair hangs behind Bruguera, a literal representation of the audience.

Desierro (Displacement), 199899

Much of Brugueras early work used her body to emphasize physical strain as a catalyst for political action. In Desierro, she encased herself in a suit of layered Cuban earth in the likeness of Congolese Nkisi Nkondi, mystical idols which, according to legend, housed spirits tasked with hunting wrongdoers and oath-breakers. The power figures became common among Afro-Caribbean religious practices. In Brugueras performance, the Nkondi becomes metaphors for the unfilled social and economic promises of the Cuban Revolution.

Untitled (Havana, 2000)

Artists participating in the 7th Havana Biennial were expressly forbidden to present work that criticized Fidel Castros regime. When Bruguera first proposed Untitled (Havana, 2000) to the biennial, she withheld plans to include in the work a looped video of the dictator unbuttoning hismilitary uniform to reveal that he is not wearing a bulletproof vest. All the while, Castro is smiling. Bruguera looks to highlight the dictators act of bravadofeigned vulnerability made possible only through his privileged position and military-grade protection.

Surrounding the video are nude male performers who stand atop mounds of sugarcane mash, Cubas most lucrative export. The video was not played until the Biennials opening day, when lines formed outside the dank military vault for a glimpse. In response, the exhibitions organizers shut off electricity around the vault, leaving the entirety of the biennial in darkness. Ultimately, the power was turned back on, but Bruguera wasnt allowed to show the video.

Department of Behavior Art (Ctedra Arte de Conducta) 200209,

In the early 2000s Bruguera founded Ctedra Arte de Conducta, a public artwork that also functioned as a participatory art school. The goal was to foster a new generation of less commercially-driven, more politically active artists of the sort that did not typically appear at Cubas traditional art schools, few of which taught performance art. Department of Behavior came about shortly after Bruguera returned from Kassel, Germany, where she showedUntitled (Kassel, 2002) at Documenta 11. The artist felt that, because the exhibition was so crowded, she was unable to activate the works message, and thus it was unsuccessfulbut it led to a breakthrough.

I started thinking about appropriating the structure and the resources of power as my medium, as my material, she toldTom Finkelpearl, author and New York Citys former cultural affairs commissioner. Instead of representing them, I wanted to put them in action; that would be my work. The curriculum focused on art as a tool for political and social action. The school opened in her home in January 2003 as a two-year program comprising weekly workshops on Behavior Art and discourse. In 2009, believing that the work had served its purpose, Bruguera closed the school.

Tatlins Whisper #5, 2008

For the performanceTatlins Whisper #5, visitors to Tate Moderns Turbine Hall were confronted by two mounted police in uniform, who aggressively patrolled the space, at times using crowd-control tactics such as closing off gallery entrances and corralling small groups into tight circles. Notions of power are the core of the workits title refers to Constructivist artist and architect Vladimir Tatlin, who designed the Monument to the Third International, an abstract structure meant as a tribute to Communist power. The performance, which occurred at unannounced times, was contingent on the participation of the museums visitors, many of whom did little to resist the officers. The piece was an attempt to bring lived realities of some oppressed communitiespolice brutality, riot suppressioninto an art space.

Immigrant Movement International, 201015

This five-year project, presented in partnership with New Yorks Queens Museum and Creative Time, asked a simple but heady question: What makes a person in the United States an immigrant?For the first year of the project, Bruguera shared a a small apartment in in Queenss Corona neighborhood with five undocumented immigrants and their six children. During that time, she lived on a minimum wage, without health insurance, to better understand what many U.S. immigrants went through daily. Another aspect of the project saw volunteers offering educational programming, including language, nutrition, dance classes, and free healthcare and daycare services from a beauty shopturnedart space.

10,148,451, 2018

In 2018, Bruguera returned to Tate Modern to stage 10,148,451 for its Turbine Hall Commission. The number, which was stamped in red ink on each visitors hand, referred to the amount of people who migrated between countries in 2017, plus those who died during their journeys that year. Like many of Brugueras later works, 10,148,451 turned viewers into participants, inviting them to leave impressions on a heat-sensitive floor or to step inside a room next to the Turbine Hall pumped with an organic compound that induced tears. The commission also included the creation of the group Tate Neighbors, a group of 21 people tasked with imagining how the museum could be in dialogue with Londons local community. In response, they renamed Tate Moderns main building after local activist Natalie Bell. The change was originally intended to be temporary, but the name was formally adopted after the performance concluded.

Read the original here:

Tania Brugueras Most Famous Works: How the Artist Has Challenged Oppressive Forces with Incisive Performances - ARTnews

The provincial directive to end the "discriminatory practice" of birth alerts is a big step forward to keeping Indigenous and racialized families together, according to advocates in Ontario.

The directive, issued on July 14 by Ontario Associate Minister of Children and Women's Issues Jill Dunlop, ordered children's aid societies to stop issuing birth alerts by mid-October.

"For our community ... for Indigenous women across the province of Ontario ... this is a real sign of recognition of our rights as mothers, our rights as women but also, more importantly, this is going to improve the outcomes for Indigenous children and Indigenous babies across the province," said Dawn Lavell Harvard, president of the Ontario Native Women's Association (ONWA).

She added, "I'm absolutely over-the-moon happy with the current government for taking this all-important step to recognize the autonomy of Indigenous mothers, to recognize their right to mother their own children something that was taken away with residential schools, were taken away with the Sixties Scoop and has been taken away generation after generation by racist governments."

The practice of birth alerts where a children's aid society notifies hospitals when they believe a newborn may be in need of protection has long been reported to disproportionately affect Indigenous families in Ontario.

Its elimination was also a recommendation made bythe National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Lavell Harvard said the systemic discrimination seen in the practice of birth alerts is reflected more broadly in the child welfare system.

"We know that there are currently more children in the care of the child welfare system than were in the residential schools at the height of the residential school system. And this is a result of poverty, is a result of racism, discrimination and systemic racism within the child welfare system ... where Indigenous mothers and Indigenous families are unfairly targeted."

"We recognize that in most cases, birth alerts do not support our goal of protecting children while supporting families to stay together. Every new mother and father need to be treated with respect, not negatively impacted because of an alert that might result in judgment with discriminatory measures," said Thelma Morris, executive director of Tikinagan Child & Family Services, a "community-based" child welfare agency that serves30 First Nations in northern Ontario.

The executive director for the Children's Aid Society of Thunder Bay, Brad Bain, said he sees the directive as a "positive step" made by the provincial government.

Bain acknowledged "the role that the Thunder Bay agency has played certainly, as well as our sector, in contributing to systemic racism and oppression."

He estimated that in recent years, the agency has issued five birth alerts per year, although noted that no birth alerts have been issued in 2020.

"As an organization, we are committed to the elimination of systemic racism and have an internal, anti-oppressive practices committee and we work in concert with our local stakeholders to inform our practices and our policies," Bain added.

Lavell Harvard said there is a lot more work to be done to keep families together.

"Indigenous-run child welfare organizations are discriminated against in terms ... they're expected to do more to hold families together with significantly less resources and then they are blamed when they have poor outcomes."

She added more "upstream" investment is needed to ensure Indigenous families are supported.

"If one wants to talk bottom line in terms of investments ... we need to be investing in that prevention, investing in providing Indigenous moms and their families with the tools they need to survive and provide for our families."

Read more:

'Discriminatory practice' of birth alerts to end in Ontario, and that's good for Indigenous families says ONWA - CBC.ca

On a cold winters night in July 2016, thousands of people gathered inside and outside Rotten Row Magistrates Court in Harare to await the verdict in the Zimbabwean governments case against Pastor Evan Mawarire, the leader of the #ThisFlag movement and a staunch opponent of then-President Robert Mugabe. When the magistrate eventually threw out the treason charges brought against Mawarire for peacefully rallying people against corruption, a street party broke out. It was an unexpected victory for the rule of lawwon, at least in part, through collective nonviolent action by ordinary people.

In its most basic form, the rule of law simply means that no one is above the law. Everyone is treated fairly and justly, and the government does not exercise its power arbitrarily. These principles lie at the heart of the ongoing protests against systemic racism and police brutality in the United States following the death of George Floyd. The rule of law is very different from rule by law, which characterises many authoritarian states and, increasingly, some democracies as well.

Many argue, not unreasonably, that building robust institutions is essential to strengthening the rule of law. But what do you do when the institutions which are meant to uphold the rule of law are so hollowed out that they have become the primary tools for its subversion? The conventional focus on building institutions can leave ordinary people feeling disempowered, waiting patiently for the all-important institutions to reform, while they remain on the receiving end of oppression meted out by those very institutions. It can also lead to unhelpful interventions by well-meaning external actors, which inadvertently strengthen the authoritarian capabilities of captured institutions, rather than the rule of law.

To strengthen the rule of law, we first need to focus on strengthening people, not institutions. This involves the difficult, dangerous, and often unglamorous work of grassroots community organising that empowers citizens to act through informal channels outside of established institutions. Such action includes non-violent protestsmarches, boycotts, strikes, and picketsas well as community initiatives that directly improve peoples lives, such as worker advice centres and community gardens.

Such efforts are especially necessary in authoritarian states where institutions are fundamentally broken. But even in established democracies, the recent failure of supposedly strong institutions to prevent the rule of law from being undermined has shown that there is no substitute for an active and organised citizenry. Such engagement cannot be legislated or decreed, or copied and pasted from another jurisdiction. People must build it collectively from the ground up.

Building people power starts with opening citizens minds to a different type of society and a new way of doing things. In apartheid South Africa, for example, the study groups and adult literacy classes in townships during the 1970s helped to lay the groundwork for the mass movement that emerged in the 1980s under the banner of the United Democratic Front. The UDF would go on to play a leading role in the struggle against apartheid, culminating in 1990 with Nelson Mandelas release from prison and the unbanning of the African National Congress.

Next, like-minded people need to organise themselves, connect with one another in the real world (not just on social media), and become actively involved in issues directly affecting their lives. These issues might at first be local rather than national, and involve less risky actions. Over time, however, people build mutual trust and gain confidence in both themselves and their collective power as a group. Coalitions form, and actions become larger in scope and perhaps more confrontational. Before you know it, a social movement emerges that is bigger than any of the individuals or organisations involved and can unlock peoples power to bring about change.

People power can strengthen the rule of law in at least three ways. For starters, it can counteract and even neutralise the top-down pressure placed on courts and police by the authoritiestypically, the executive. This can help to ensure that even hollowed-out or compromised institutions discharge their duties in accordance with the rule of lawas in the case involving Mawarire.

A people-power movement can also create alternative spaces that prefigure a society in which the rule of law is respected. The movement must operate internally in a just and fair way, and apply the same standards to all its members regardless of rank. And any civil disobedience must have a strategic purpose and be highly disciplined, so that participants understand that such action does not constitute a rejection of the rule of law, but rather a means of establishing it.

Third, people power has repeatedly proved to be an effective tool in defeating even the most brutal dictatorships and achieving a transition to a more democratic system of governance. Far-reaching reforms that strengthen the rule of law can then be implemented in ways that would not have been possible under a corrupted system. In November 2019, for example, Sudans new transitional authorityestablished after months of non-violent protests against President Omar al-Bashirs dictatorship and then against the military regime that ousted himrepealed an oppressive public-order law that had governed how women could behave and dress in public. Although Sudans transition is by no means complete, this represented a huge triumph for the rule of law. It would not have been achieved without people power.

Authoritarian leaders understand and fear people power. Soon after Mawarires hearing, the Zimbabwean regime erected a fence around Rotten Row Magistrates Court to prevent similar public gatherings there in the future. But just as authoritarian regimes adapt and learn from their past mistakes, those of us fighting for a society based on the rule of law also must adjust, innovate, and improvise, and accumulate enough power to dismantle the oppressive systems that shackle us. Only through the struggle of ordinary people can we eventually shift our focus to building strong institutions that protect everyone equally.

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Read the original here:

How people power strengthens the rule of law - The Kathmandu Post