Tania Bruguera: ‘Cuba has never existed and does not exist; it has always been someone’s projection’ 

There’s a photo of the artist Tania Bruguera, in which her young and naked body carries the weight of a decapitated ram. The animal carcass covers her breasts and genitals like a shield. Her mouth is filled with a handful of wet earth, meant to symbolize the collective suicide committed by the Indigenous people of Cuba during the Spanish occupation. The image — as sensual as it is violent and as tender as it is aggressive — immortalized The Burden of Guilt, a performance exhibition which Bruguera premiered in Havana in 1997, when she was 29.

One wonders if anything remains of that young woman in Tania Bruguera today. During her interview with EL PAÍS, she dresses modestly, in black. She spends her days as a senior lecturer in Media & Performance, Theater, Dance & Media at Harvard University. “I hope I have more of that person left in me than I think,” Bruguera shrugs.

Now 56, the renowned and award-winning Cuban artist is the founder of the Institute of Artivism/Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt (INSTAR). A master of performance art and political art, as well as the creator of the concept of “useful art,” she has taught at several universities around the world. Bruguera is also a declared opponent of the government in Havana.

The artist leads a semi-secluded life in an apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In her home, there’s a family portrait depicting her sister, her mother and her father, Ambassador Miguel Brugueras, who was the first great power that the artist ever faced.

When she was 11, Bruguera became aware of who her father was and what it meant to be his daughter. In addition to being a diplomat, her father was the founder of Cuba’s state security agencies — the counterintelligence apparatus that Fidel Castro created when he took control of the country in 1959. This was the same apparatus that, later on in the artist’s life, would detain, imprison, surveil, and threaten her, all because of her political ideas.

Aged 15, she decided to remove the letter “S” from the end of her father’s surname. Since then, she’s been Tania Bruguera. “My father was a childhood friend of Camilo Cienfuegos (one of the major figures of the Cuban Revolution). Because of his work, he saw Fidel all the time. In fact, when Fidel got sick, he sent for him,” she explains. “If you ask me about his life, I know almost nothing… only what’s on the internet, or what I’ve [been told by] some people who knew him.”

With a father who was an ambassador, from the age of three, Tania lived in countries such as France, Lebanon, and Panama. She didn’t return to Cuba until she was 11. “For me, Cuba was the Cuba of the powerful people, who went on vacation to Varadero. [It was] the Cuba of foreigners, a Cuba where everything was perfect. When I was 11, my mother and father divorced due to political problems. Among other things, [this was] because planes — without seats — were sent to Panama to be filled with furniture, clothes, Chanel or Dior perfumes for Vilma Espín, Raúl Castro’s wife. My mother, who had been a dreamer at the beginning of the Revolution, began to realize the corruption, the disparity between what was being said and what was being done. That’s when the friction between [my parents] began.”

“One day, my father got us out of bed, without packing or anything. He put us on a plane and sent us back to Cuba. Then, I started school. My friends lived in tenements: they were hungry, they didn’t have clothes. And I realized that reality wasn’t as I had been told. There have always been two Cubas: that of the people and that of the leaders and foreigners.”

Bruguera says that, on many occasions, the Cuban authorities used the bond between father and daughter — “which was complex and at times strained” — as emotional blackmail. “But what they didn’t know was that, towards the end of his life, my father told me that he was proud of me, because when I believed in something, I even went against him. That’s been my greatest shield against the abuses of the Cuban state.”

On August 17, 2021, Bruguera left Cuba. She hasn’t returned. Her last few years on the island were turbulent for her, as well as for her fellow artists and part of Cuban civil society. The days have alternated between house arrests, threats, imprisonment, surveillance, and interrogations by agents from the security services. In 2020, a collective hunger strike took place at the headquarters of the San Isidro Movement — a group of Cuban artists, journalists and academics formed in 2018 to protest against censorship — which made headlines around the world. This was followed by a demonstration on November 27, 2020, in which a group of intellectuals — Bruguera among them — demanded a change in policies from the Ministry of Culture. Subsequently, in July of 2021, unprecedented anti-government protests broke out.

For at least a year, while she was working on the prestigious international exhibition Documenta, she didn’t feel that she was outside of Cuba, even though she was physically far away. Then, her feelings changed, shifting from emptiness to adaptation. Currently, she teaches classes on performance, social art, podcasts and criticism. “Harvard is a place that bolsters my desire for self-improvement,” she affirms.

Question. What is Tania Bruguera’s life like outside of Cuba?

Answer. It’s a life of constant transition. Like anyone who’s been forced to leave the country where they were born, you have to remake yourself. It’s a process in which you always have to be rethinking who you are and, above all, what social utility you have, or what you can contribute. Your role changes and so does your relationship with what happens in [your home country].

For me, it’s important not to remain stranded in a Cuba that’s already [trapped] in the quicksand of memory… [a Cuba filled with] old victories that one relives to feel validated. [I have to] understand where the disconnection — even if it’s permanent — has been created in the collective narrative line that I’m a part of. You have to see how you can incorporate yourself, while knowing that it’s no longer your turn to be in the foreground, because you’re not part of many things that are happening there, even though we all have a role in what happens in Cuba.

I also try not to have hatred. It’s a difficult exercise for many people, but I’ve always felt that the moment you become a hater, they win. The dictatorship in Cuba is reduced to very binary emotions, it moves within a very limited emotional spectrum. I try not to fall into those traps — I watch out for them all the time. I try to behave like the social being I want to be. I don’t want to wait; I want to live the future we want for Cuba now.

Q. Once, you were struggling — face-to-face — against power structures in Cuba. And now, you’re in the United States… and more than just the United States, you’re in Boston. And, more than Boston, you’re at Harvard. Are you now fighting against a different type of power?

A. There are injustices everywhere and I protest against everything I think is wrong, I don’t care where I am, or what it costs me. Here, I have vocalized my opinions on things that could have been handled differently. I’m in the United States because it’s where I’ve always been given professional opportunities… but it’s not the place I would have chosen to live. I would prefer to live in Iceland, or in a country where I can confront another societal model.

Q. Some of your works — such as, say, Tatlin’s Whisper — have Cuba as their setting. How different is it to make your art in Havana, rather than in another city in the world? And what’s the difference between making your art in a plaza, versus a gallery?

A. Some of my works, if they’re not made in Havana, don’t make sense. The Guggenheim bought [Tatlin’s Whisper] from me, but I’ve forbidden them from showing it. [This should only happen] if there’s ever a restriction on freedom of expression in the United States. Because the problem is that many political works are cheapened or lose their meaning when what makes them exist isn’t present.

With that [series of works], I understood what it was like to put my finger on the sore spot. It was in 2009 and it was hard for me: it was the last time I could exhibit my work in an institution in Cuba, but it was worth it. From that experience, I created the concept of “art for a specific political moment.” I understood the consequences of doing it… but also what it’s like to know that it’s worth losing something to do the work you have to do, when you have to do it, and where you have to do it.

Q. You’re an artist currently at work outside of Cuba. And you’re an international artist. So, how Cuban is your art?

A. My art is Cuban outside of Cuba and it’s international in Cuba. It’s been very difficult for me — I’ve had a very slow career, because I haven’t fallen into any of the clichés. Political art is disliked not only in Cuba, but anywhere, because no one likes to mess with power. I’ve tried to be governed by ethics in my work: I haven’t exhibited in certain places, I’ve declined certain [funding]. It’s been difficult. I’ve had to say “no” to things that would have hastened my career and say “yes” to projects that didn’t interest me as much, in a search to be coherent.

Q. Several of your performances took place in sites like your own house in Havana, state museums, or public spaces, such as the Plaza de la Revolución. You even had a training course for artists… something that seems unthinkable today. Has Cuba ever been worse off than now?

A. Whenever you think that Cuba has reached its limit, those who lead it show that they can always go lower. Cuba is a failed state. Today, independent institutions — even with minimal resources — function better than Cuban state institutions. And something that the governments of other countries don’t want to see is that nothing will be resolved until there are certain political guarantees for Cubans. Those who are in power today have made it clear that all they want is to hold on to that power, no matter if they harm the people in their efforts. The leaders in Cuba have forgotten that to govern is to serve… all they do is serve themselves.

Q. The Cuban-American performance artist Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) has helped you think about Cuba and understand that the country isn’t the mirror image of a man who was in power for more than half a century. Do you think that Cuba has a more feminine image, in contrast to the one we’ve always been exposed to?

A. What I believe is that Cuba isn’t an island… and that was taught to me by Ana Mendieta. She was supposed to go to Cuba and get to know it. I made a project titled Homage to Ana Mendieta a few months after she died. I was fascinated by the idea that Cuba could be expressed in so many ways and in so many places. My friends from the generation of the 1980s were starting to leave the island. This artwork was like a reverse of Ana Mendieta’s. She was missing the island, while I was missing the people of the island.

Cuba has always been an idea, a projection. Cuba has never existed and still doesn’t exist — it has always been someone else’s projection. What happens is that, when the revolution came, there was an attempt to pretend that it was everyone’s projection. When, in reality, it was just one man’s projection. That was the emotional game they played with us, making us believe that we could all project the idea of the country. And, right now, Cuba exists even less. I think its future must be feminine. It would be worth trying to create a feminist Cuba.

Q. If you hadn’t been born in a totalitarian regime, would your art have been the same? Would you still have gone against power?

A. I don’t think so. I’ve thought a lot about what kind of art I would have made. The mechanisms of censorship — the strategies to take away people’s desire to fight — are everywhere. In the art world itself, there’s a lot of injustice. I do believe that I would still be involved in struggles for social justice, but perhaps I wouldn’t be an artist. One thing must also be taken into account: in Cuba, the dictatorship tries to make you the person they feel comfortable with you being… but then you realize that this happens in all spaces of power. So, the battle isn’t just political; it’s a constant identity struggle. It’s not random, everything is very well thought out: they’ve been using this [strategy to] identify the enemy within for more than 60 years. I’ve always fought against that, so as not to be defined by it.

Q. You’ve said that you refuse to answer questions like, “Did you leave, did you stay, did you go into exile?” You’ve never accepted the concept of emigration or exile...

A. I still don’t let the dictatorship in Cuba define who I am. When you’re at the United Nations denouncing what they’ve done to you, you have to use the standard language of those organizations: that of the exiled, the expatriate. But I don’t accept any of that, because I’m not going to let the dictatorship decide who I am.

Q. Are you ever going to return?

A. Today, I would say no… but that answer is also a defense mechanism, because they won’t allow me to return.

Q. Have you experienced defeat?

A. I’ve learned lessons. I’ve understood that the dictatorship in Cuba aspires to humiliate you, to make you unable to be proud of yourself. I’ve realized that the greatest achievement of the dictatorship is when it makes you unable to look in the mirror.

I don’t see it as a war of victories or defeats, but rather as an accumulation of wills that’s gaining ground. I see that [the authorities] have also suffered defeats with me and with the activist and opposition movement in Cuba, because there are things that we’ve managed to do and they haven’t been able to react or prevent [them from happening]. I don’t see the things that have happened to me as defeats, but as lessons.

The future that those of us who are outside — and many of those who are inside — imagine is a future made by ourselves. This is going to be difficult, it’s going to cost time and resources, but it will be made by us. Those who are in power in Cuba are weakened. Violence and necropolitics have become their only possibilities. Cubans today have a duty: to say, wherever we stand, wherever we are, that Cuba is a dictatorship.

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