Coco Fusco facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Coco Fusco
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Juliana Emilia Fusco Miyares
June 18, 1960 New York City, New York, U.S.
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| Nationality | Cuban-American |
| Education | Brown University (1982), Stanford University (1985), Middlesex University (2007) |
| Known for | Interdisciplinary art, writing |
| Awards | 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2013 Absolut Art Writing Award, 2003 Herb Alpert Award |
Coco Fusco (born Juliana Emilia Fusco Miyares on June 18, 1960) is a talented Cuban-American artist, writer, and curator. Her work has been shown and published all over the world. Fusco's art explores important topics like gender, identity, race, and power. She uses different ways to share her ideas, including performance art, video, and interactive art installations.
Contents
Early Life and Education
Coco Fusco was born in 1960 in New York City. Her mother was a Cuban exile who had left Cuba that same year.
Fusco went to college and earned several degrees. She got her first degree from Brown University in 1982. Later, she earned a master's degree from Stanford University in 1985. She also completed a Ph.D. in Art and Visual Culture from Middlesex University in 2005.
Her Career as an Artist
After finishing her studies in 1985, Fusco met some Cuban artists visiting the US. She started traveling to Cuba and became part of the art scene there. She continued this until the mid-1990s.
Coco Fusco has shown her performances and videos at many art festivals. These include the 56th Venice Biennale and three Whitney Biennials. She has also received many awards for her work. Some of these include a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2003 Herb Alpert Award.
Much of Fusco's art looks at themes like colonialism, power, race, gender, and history. She often uses her own body in her performances. This helps her explore how these big ideas affect people. She creates different characters to challenge old ideas about identity. Fusco also explores what it means to be a Cuban exile in her art.
Two Undiscovered Amerindians...
In 1992, Coco Fusco created a very famous performance piece. It was called Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West. She worked with another artist, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, on this project.
The performance was first shown in Madrid and London. Later, it traveled to museums in Sydney and New York City. A documentary film called The Couple in the Cage was made about it.
During the performance, Fusco and Gómez-Peña put themselves in a cage. They pretended to be natives from an "undiscovered island." This was a way to make fun of the old practice of exhibiting people for entertainment. They acted out tasks and rituals. Fake scientific information was also part of the show. People watching could pay to take a photo or see them dance.
This artwork was a strong critique of colonialism. It also questioned the role of museums in showing people. It was created around the 500-year anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas.
Selected Performances
- Better Yet When Dead (1997), El Ultimo Deseo (The Last Wish, 1997), and El Evento Suspendido (The Suspended Event, 2000) are performances that use images of death and burial. They highlight the challenges women faced in Latin America.
- Better Yet When Dead (1997): In this piece, Fusco lay silently in a coffin. She was surrounded by roses. She wanted to show how female artists were sometimes more valued after they died.
- El Ultimo Deseo (The Last Wish) (1997): Performed in Cuba, this piece looked like a traditional Catholic wake. Fusco lay on the floor, surrounded by flowers and candles. It referred to the wish of many Cuban exiles, including her grandmother, to return to Cuba.
- El Evento Suspendido (The Postponed Event) (2000): For this performance, Fusco was buried vertically up to her chest. She was very much alive and wrote letters to observers. This showed the feeling of being "half-buried" or stuck in exile.
- Stuff (1996) was a project with Nao Bustamante. It made fun of globalism and cultural stereotypes, especially about women and food. The performance connected old ideas of cannibalism to modern world relationships.
- Rights of Passage (1997) was created for the Johannesburg Biennale. Fusco dressed as a South African policewoman. She explored ideas about race and identity after apartheid in South Africa.
- Bare Life Study #1 (2005) and A Room of One's Own: Women and Power in the New America (2005) looked at the "War on Terror." These performances examined the growing role of women in the US military. They also touched on the use of torture in military operations.
- In Observations of Predation In Humans: A Lecture by Dr. Zira, Animal Psychologist (2013), Fusco acted as Dr. Zira. This character is a primate from Planet of the Apes. She used the non-human character's view to comment on human behavior.
Writing and Teaching
As a writer, Coco Fusco focuses on gender, race, colonialism, and power structures. She writes about these topics in Latin America and around the world. She has written many essays and six books.
Her book Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba (2015) tells the history of public space and identity in Cuba. Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self (2003) was a book for a photography exhibition. It looked at how race is shown in photos in the United States. The Bodies that Were Not Ours and Other Writings (2001) is a collection of essays. It explores the lasting effects of colonialism.
Fusco has also taught art at several universities. These include Columbia University and MIT. In 2014, she received a Fulbright award. She taught in São Paulo, Brazil for a year. Currently, she teaches at the University of Florida College of the Arts.
Awards
- Anonymous Was A Woman Award (2021)
- American Academy of Arts and Letters Arts Award (2021)
- Free Speech Defender Award (2023)
Public Collections
Coco Fusco's art is part of important museum collections. These include:
Selected Videos
Coco Fusco has created many videos. Some of them include:
- La Botella al Mar de María Elena (The Message in a Bottle from María Elena) (2015)
- La Confesion (2015)
- Operation Atropos (2006)
- a/k/a Mrs. George Gilbert (2004)
- Pochonovela: A Chicano Soap Opera (1996)
- The Couple in the Cage: Guatianaui Odyssey (1993)
Images for kids
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Coco Fusco
See also
In Spanish: Coco Fusco para niños
