After finishing graduate school in 1985, Fusco met a group of Cuban artists, includingJosé Bedia, who were visiting the US. She began traveling toCuba and participating in the visual arts scene there, until in the mid-1990s she withdrew as a result of post-Cold War political and cultural changes in the country.[2]
Much of Fusco's interdisciplinary art practice over the last several decades has been concerned with the themes of colonialism, power, race, gender, and history. Her exploration of these themes has culminated in staged performances that concern the embodied experiences of these phenomena, in an effort to destabilize their meanings.[7] She locates her own body not only as the site of their merging but also as their immediate product.[8] She presents and communicates this through her actual performances themselves. In them, she creates and takes on multiple identities to destabilize those identities that have been historically imposed on bodies along colonial, racial, and gendered lines.[9] Fusco also engages with legacies of Cuban exile in her work, as in some of her earlier performances where she stages Catholic rituals and experiences of dislocation.[10]
In 1992 Fusco created the influential performance pieceTwo UndiscoveredAmerindians Visit the West in collaboration withGuillermo Gómez-Peña.[1] It was first presented at thePlaza Colón inMadrid andCovent Garden inLondon, then toured to theAustralian Museum inSydney and theMuseum of Natural History inNew York City.[11] The performance was filmed as part of thedocumentaryThe Couple in the Cage, directed byPaula Heredia.[1] During performances ofTwo Undiscovered Amerindians..., Fusco and Gómez-Peña put themselves on public display in a cage, in a satirical reference to the historical practice ofexhibiting human beings as entertainment. They claimed to be natives of an undiscovered island in theGulf of Mexico, and performed tasks and rituals that were explained bypseudoscientific informational materials posted as part of the performance piece.[1] Audience members were invited to interact with them and could pay to take a photo or see them dance.[12] The work was acritique ofcolonialism, specifically of the role played by the scientific institutions in which it was performed, and a response to the globalquincentenary celebrations ofChristopher Columbus's arrival inthe Americas.[11]
Better Yet When Dead (1997),El Ultimo Deseo (The Last Wish, 1997), andEl Evento Suspendido (The Suspended Event, 2000) used the imagery of death and burial to highlight the social restrictions and oppression experienced by women inLatin American countries.[1]
Better Yet When Dead (1997): This is the first of several of Fusco's performances that relate death and burial to femininity in order to examine "why Latino cultures...are so fascinated with female creativity once it has been forever silenced. [...] it is almost as if a violent death makes [women artists] more acceptably feminine" (Fusco in Schultz 2008: 16) .[13]Better Yet... was performed twice by Fusco, first in Canada, and again in Colombia, for several hours each day during the three to four day run of the piece. In the performance, Fusco laid silently in a coffin, surrounded by roses and satin. In this performance, she carefully controlled her breathing and movements so as to appear like an actual corpse.[13]
El Ultimo Deseo (The Last Wish) (1997): This piece, performed in Cuba at the 1997Havana Biennial, also involved Fusco playing dead for an audience. In it, she staged a traditional Catholic wake, laying on the floor of a parlor, wrapped in a white sheet and ringed with flowers and tea lights. As inBetter Yet, she remained still for the duration of the performance in order to blur the line between life and death.[10] At the threshold of the room where she laid, a sign was posted that bore the name of the performance's title, which refers to the unfulfilled "last wish" of Fusco's own grandmother, as well as many other Cuban exiles, to return to Cuba to be buried.[10]
El Evento Suspendido (The Postponed Event) (2000): This performance continues Fusco's exploration of womanhood and death. LikeEl Ultimo Deseo, it was also performed as part of a Biennial, but this time took place outside of El Espacio Aglutinador, a gallery in Havana. For this performance, as opposed to the two above, Fusco was not performing death itself, but rather burial. She was very much alive and animated in this performance, buried vertically up to her chest in the gallery's lawn, embodying the "belatedness of exile", half-buried in Cuban soil.[10] She remained like this for three hours, beginning at sunset, and rewriting the same letter over and over, offering the copies to observers (below, originally written in Spanish).
"My dear ones, I am writing this letter to tell you that I am alive. For many years I feared that if I told the truth you would suffer at the hands of those who buried another woman in my name. I can no longer stand not being able to tell you that I exist. Not a day has passed without my dreaming of you. Fortunately I can say that I recovered from the ordeal that resulted in my departure. I will send more news soon. With love, C." This letter is adapted from another of Fusco's works, a one act play entitledThe Incredible Disappearing Woman (2000).[10]
Bare Life Study #1 (2005), andA Room of One's Own: Women and Power in the New America (2005) were created in response to the "war on terror" used performance to examine the expanding role of women in theUS military and the use oftorture in its operations.[18]
InObservations of Predation In Humans: A Lecture by Dr. Zira, Animal Psychologist (2013), Fusco performed as theprimate Dr. Zira fromPlanet of the Apes, using the perspective of the non-human character to comment onhuman behavior. The performance was commissioned byThe Studio Museum in Harlem and premiered in December 2013.[19][20]
As a writer, Coco Fusco has focused on gender, race, colonialism, and power structures in Latin America and around the world. Her body of work includes interviews, critical essays, and six published books.Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba (2015) is a history of public space, performance, and identity in Cuba.[21]A Field Guide for Female Interrogators (2008), a companion volume to her performanceA Room of One's Own: Women and Power in the New America (2005), examines the sexualized role of women in US militaryinterrogations.[22]A Field Guide for Female Interrogators was shortlisted for theIndex on Censorship T. R. Fyvel Book Award.Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self (2003, edited with Brian Wallis), is the catalogue for a photography exhibition of the same name, curated by Fusco and Wallis at theInternational Center of Photography, which looked at racial imagery in photography and the representation of racial attitudes in the United States.[23][24]The Bodies that Were Not Ours and Other Writings (2001) is a collection of essays and interviews investigating the legacy of colonialism.[25]Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas (2000) is a scholarly work surveyingLatinx and Latin American performance art.[26] In it, Fusco centers the aesthetic and cultural value of artistic expression and works against notions of reducing Latin American performance to "the political".[27]English Is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas (1995) was her first collection of interviews and essays, for which she won the 1995Critics' Choice award.[28][29]
Allatson, Paul. "Coco Fusco, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and 'American' Cannibal Reveries." InLatino Dreams: Transcultural Traffic and the U.S. National Imaginary. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi Press, 2002.
Amich, Candice. "Playing Dead in Cuba: Coco Fusco's Stagings of Dissensus."Theatre Research International, vol. 34, no. 3, Oct. 2009, pp. 267–277.ISSN0307-8833
Becker, Carl L.The Subversive Imagination: Artists, Society, and Responsibility. New York: Routledge, 1994.
Copeland, Colette. "Art, Gender, Power, and the F Word: An Interview with Coco Fusco."Afterimage, vol. 35, no. 5, Mar/Apr2008, pp. 4–6.ISSN0300-7472
Cotter, Holland. "Caught on Video: Fantasy Interrogation, Real Tension".The New York Times. May 30, 2006, Section E/Column 1, p. 3.
Fusco, Coco.English is Broken Here. New York: The New Press, 1995.
Fusco, Coco (editor).Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.
Fusco, Coco.Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self. New York: International Center of Photography in Association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, 2003.
Fusco, Coco.A Field Guide for Female Interrogators, New York, Seven Stories Press, 2008
Fusco, Coco.Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba, Tate Publishing, 2015
Jones, Amelia.Performing the Body/Performing the Text. London and New York: Routledge, 1999.
Wallace, Brian.Art Matters: How the Culture Wars Changed America. New York: New York University Press, 1999.
Wallace, Michele.Black Popular Culture. New York: New Press, 1998.
^Allatson, Paul, "Coco Fusco, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and 'American' Cannibal Reveries". InLatino Dreams: Transcultural Traffic and the U.S. National Imaginary. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi Press, 2002, pp. 253–306.
^Beckman, Karen (2009). "Gender, Power, and Pedagogy in Coco Fusco's "Bare Life Study" #1 (2005), "A Room of One's Own" (2005), and "Operation Atropos" (2006)".Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media.50 (1/2):125–138.doi:10.1353/frm.0.0053.JSTOR41552543.S2CID144480631.
^Dolan, Jill (January 1, 2009). Fusco, Coco (ed.). "The Art of Interrogation".The Women's Review of Books.26 (2):3–4.JSTOR20476818.
^Veneciano, Jorge Daniel (January 1, 2005). Fusco, Coco; Wallis, Brian (eds.). "Tinting the American Subject".Art Journal.64 (1):113–115.doi:10.2307/20068372.JSTOR20068372.
^"Skin Games".NYMag.com. January 22, 2004. RetrievedMarch 12, 2017.
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