Coco Fusco's First US Museum Survey: 'Tomorrow, I Will Become an Island'

'Tomorrow, I Will Become an Island' Exhibition

• 🏝️ The exhibition "Tomorrow, I Will Become an Island" at El Museo Del Barrio is Coco Fusco's first US museum survey.
• 💡 The title is a paraphrase of a poem by Cuban writer Heberto Padilla, evoking the power and potential of transformation through art.
• 🌍 The survey is a version of a previously exhibited show in Berlin and an expanded version in Barcelona, with unique works included at El Museo Del Barrio.

Artistic Practice and Recognition

• 🎭 Fusco, a Cuban-American artist born in New York, uses video, performance, installation, photography, and writing.
• 🗣️ She is recognized as an "eloquent political voice" speaking against repression and for the unheard.
• 🖼️ While known for the controversial "Undiscovered Amerindians" piece, Fusco aims to showcase the breadth of her 30-year practice to younger audiences and students.

Exploring Historical Representation

• 🏛️ Fusco uses art to pose questions about imagining and inventing history, citing the example of an Afrofuturist period room at the Met.
• 🖼️ She challenges students to consider the validity of historical representations, comparing them to the way Jesus Christ is depicted in Western painting.

Key Artworks and Themes

• 🇨🇺 "La Plaza" (Empty Plaza) explores the Plaza of the Revolution in Havana, contrasting its historical role as a site of political theater with its current emptiness.
• 🚶 The film captures the plaza's diminished role, especially in the wake of the Arab Spring, and the significance of people refusing to gather or demonstrate.
• 🇺🇸 "Everyone Who Lives Here Is a New Yorker" compares historical immigrant portraits by Lewis Hine with contemporary arrivals, highlighting the continuous waves of immigration to New York seeking opportunity, safety, and freedom.
• 🚢 A piece involving a rowboat near Hart Island, the largest potter's field in the US, reflects on the presence of death and the dead during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• 🕊️ This work, created in homage to a friend, incorporates the ritual of throwing flowers into the sea, a common practice in Spanish-speaking countries to memorialize the dead.