Faculty: Tania Bruguera

Assistant Professor
tbruguera@uchicago.edu

Tania Bruguera is a political and interdisciplinary artist whose works focus on the relationship between art, politics and life. In her pieces, art is conceived as an experience to be walked through and as a space for the realization of utopian projects. Bruguera is particularly interested in the insertion of art into everyday political life. Since 2002 (with the creation of Catedra Arte de Conducta, an alternative art school project in Havana), she has embarked on a series of projects in which she works towards appropriating the structures and resources of power rather than just the language. Bruguera is no longer interested in merely representing political situations but in creating them by putting into motion some of the same strategies used by political powers. Her work, often of an ephemeral nature because of the use of live actions and/or fragile materials, reflects the similarly ephemeral condition of any political truth.

Bruguera has been a participant in Documenta 11, as well as in several biennales such as 49th and 51st Venice, Sao Paolo, Istanbul, Moscow, Tirana, Goteborg, Johannesburg, Kwangju, Shangai, Havana and Site Santa Fe. Her work has also been exhibited in numerous museums including solo exhibitions at FRAC Lorraine, The Kunsthalle Wien; Kunsthalle Kiel; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes; Casa de las Americas; as well as in group shows at The New Museum of Contemporary Art; Boijmans van Beuningen; Museum; Museum Moderne Kunst; The Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago; Helsinki Art Museum; The Whitechapel Art Gallery and The Institute of International Visual Art among others. She has lectured extensively internationally among others at The Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, The School of the Art Institute in Chicago, The Royal College of Art in London, The New School and The Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In 1998 she was selected as a Guggenheim fellow (United States). In 2007 and 2000 she received a Prince Claus Grant (The Netherlands.)

She received her MFAs from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (United States) and Instituto Superior de Arte (Cuba).

Her work is part of the collection of the Museum Moderne Kunst (Germany); Daros Foundation (Switzerland); JP Morgan Chase Bank (United States); Museum of Modern Art, artist book collection; Bronx Museum (United States); Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes; Centro de Arte Contemporaneo Wifredo Lam (Cuba); The New Museum for Latin American Art (England.)

Bruguera was featured in Art Now vol. 2 (Ed. Taschen), Fresh Cream (Ed. Phaidon, England); Performance Live Art (Ed. Thames and Hudson, Ltd., England); Art Tomorrow (Ed. Terrail, France); Holy terrors: Latin American women perform (Ed. Duke University, United States); Corpus Delecti - Performance Art of the Americas (Ed. Routledge, England); New Art of Cuba (Ed. University of Texas Press, United States.) She had feature articles about her work at The New York Times, Le Monde, The Village Voice, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, and reviewed in Artforum, Flash Art, Kunstforum, Art News, Art Nexus, The Nordic Art Review, Beaux Arts, Performance Research, among others.

She currently lives and works between Chicago and Havana. She is the founder/director of Arte de Conducta (behavior art), the first performance studies program in Latin America, hosted by Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana and is faculty at the University IUAV in Venice, Italy and The University of Chicago, United States.