Standard-definition video (black and white and color, sound)
In 1992, Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña toured the United States, Spain, England, and Australia as representatives of the fictional, “undiscovered” island of Guatinaui. Confined within a gilded cage, the duo performed made-up “traditional tasks,” such as lifting weights and watching television. Although the performance was intended as a satirical reenactment of ethnographic exhibitions of humans—a practice that reached its peak during nineteenth-century world’s fairs—many viewers believed they were real captives. Viewer responses, documented in this film, ranged from debates over the performance’s authenticity to calls to the Humane Society. Fusco later recorded some of the responses as engravings (also on view here), which reference early forms of mass media that popularized images of exoticized “others.”
2024
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Coco Fusco
Cuban-American, born 1960 2 works onlineThe interdisciplinary force of Coco Fusco is as raw as it is necessary. Born in New York City in 1960, the Cuban American artist’s relationship with Manhattan, Cuba, and the world forms a transformative and critical dialogue.
Learn more →Institutional critique
A form of conceptual art, which emerged in the late 1960s, centered on the critique of museums, galleries, private collections, and other art institutions.
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Migration and movement
People have always moved around the world. Early humans were nomadic, traveling in search of food, shelter, and safety. Today, people move for many different reasons, including economic, political, cultural, religious, and environmental.
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500 Years
Gallery 208In 1992, the K’iche’ Guatemalan activist Rigoberta Menchú was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She called it “one of the greatest conquests in the struggle for peace, for human rights, and for the rights of the Indigenous people, who, for five hundred years, have been split, fragmented, as well as the victims of genocides, repression, and discrimination.
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