Coco Fusco Refuses to Be Pigeonholed

"The 65-year-old says she wanted me to see this photo right away because she's tired of interviewers and audiences asking her where she's from, as if they need to plot her identity along the Cuban American axis to get why she creates the art she does. When Fusco makes work - confrontational performances, videos, photography, writing - she's not driven by an urge to self-document. She'd rather shine light on the issues that provoke her."

"In September, she opened her first U.S. survey show, "Tomorrow, I Will Become an Island," at El Museo del Barrio, clarifying the injustices that have compelled her art-making for more than three decades: the denial of dignity to workers and immigrants; the twisted misuses of feminine sexuality; and, in her recent work about Cuba, the state's abuses of power. Fusco can be combative. She can be a prankster."

Coco Fusco began life as a U.S. citizen taken to Cuba in 1960 when her mother, a doctor who had overstayed a U.S. visa, delayed departure to bring her newborn. Fusco resists identity reduction along a Cuban-American axis and creates confrontational performances, videos, photography, and writing to illuminate injustices. Her first U.S. survey show, Tomorrow, I Will Become an Island, framed decades of work addressing denial of dignity to workers and immigrants, abuses of female sexuality, and state repression in Cuba. Fusco often employs provocation and prankish tactics to expose power and prejudice.

Read at Vulture