Tania Bruguera is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in behavior art, performance, installation and video.
She has been a participant in Documenta 11 (Germany) as well as in several biennales such as Venice (Italy), Johannesburg (South Africa), Sao Paolo (Brazil), Shangai (China), Havana (Cuba), and Site Santa Fe (United States.)
Her work has also been exhibited at The New Museum of Contemporary Art (United States); The Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago (United States); Boijmans van Beuningen Museum (The Netherlands); Museum für Moderne Kunst (Germany); Helsinki Art Museum (Finland), The Whitechapel Art Gallery (England); Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam (Cuba) and Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Cuba). She has performed in venues such as The Kunsthalle Wien (Austria); Stedjlick Museum von Actuele Kunst (Belgium); Museo X-Teresa Arte Actual (Mexico); Museo de Bellas Artes (Venezuela) and The Institute of International Visual Art (England.)
She has lectured extensively internationally among others at The New School in New York, The School of the Art Institute in Chicago, The Royal College of Art in London and The Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In 1998 she was selected as a Guggenheim fellow (United States). In 2000 she received the Prince Claus Prize (The Netherlands.)
Her work is part of the collection of the Museum für Moderne Kunst (Germany); Daros Foundation (Switzerland); JP Morgan Chase Bank (United States); Museum of Modern Art, artist book collection (United States); Bronx Museum (United States); Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Cuba); Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam (Cuba); The New Museum for Latin American Art (England.)
Bruguera was featured in “Fresh Cream” (Ed. Phaidon, England); “Performance Live Art Since 1060’s” (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 has been written about in The New York Times, Le Monde, The Village Voice, Newsweek, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, and reviewed in Art News, Artforum, Flash Art, Art Nexus, The Nordic Art Review, Beaux Arts, Performance Research, Kunstforum among others.
She was an Artist – in – Residency at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (United States); San Francisco Art Institute (United States); Khoj artists residency (India); Headlands Centers for the Arts (United States); The Western Front (Canada); The Gasworks Studios (England); ART/OMI International Workshop (United States).
She received her MFAs from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (United States) and Instituto Superior de Arte (Cuba). Her BFA is from Escuela de Arte San Alejandro (Havana). She currently lives and works between Chicago and Havana.
She is the founder / director of Arte de Conducta, the first performance studies program in Latin America, hosted by Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana and is faculty at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Critic and curator Gerardo Mosquera wrote after her performance “The Burden of Guilt”: “Tania Bruguera recently astounded audiences with a stunning political image — perhaps the most awe inspiring piece ever made by a visual artist from the island.”
Critic Christian Chamber wrote after the 2000 Havana Biennale: “Bruguera scored a knockout with her work. It’s rare that anyone, with such exact artistic means and such courage, exposes a difficult political and social situation from the inside.”
Of her performance/installation work Octavio Zaya wrote: “Tania Bruguera toys restlessly with the idea that individual stories should be understood within the context of social and historical experience. This approach, however, is not the result of a deliberate scheme to devise an essential pattern or formula. On the contrary, Bruguera weaves a dense and intricate fabric out of apparently disconnected issues (…). These open up into a project both intellectual and quotidian that engages the viewer in a constant exchange of signifying possibilities.”
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