Tania Bruguera Cuba, b. 1968
150 x 98 cm
Bruguera performed the action at her house at Tejadillo 214 in Old Havana on 4 May 1997, during the sixth Havana Biennial but outside its program, for an audience she assembled herself. She stands nude before a Cuban flag she wove from human hair. A decapitated lamb hangs across her chest. At her feet are bowls of Cuban soil, water, and salt, and for roughly forty-five minutes she mixes them by hand and eats, steadily, without speaking or acknowledging the room. The salt stands in for tears.
She has written that the story behind it reached her as rumor rather than record, and that she could not determine whether it was testimony or something invented because someone needed it to exist: that a group of the island's indigenous population ate dirt until it killed them rather than live under Spanish rule. Bruguera treats the act as resistance rather than surrender, and the materials follow from that. A flag made of hair is a nation constituted from the bodies of the people in it. A lamb worn rather than offered puts the sacrifice on the person performing it.
The print is documentation of an event that could not be repeated on the same terms, and it necessarily surrenders the two things that structured the action, its duration and its physical cost. The 1997-1999 date reflects this afterlife rather than a period of making: it spans the Havana performance, the later Venezuelan staging at the Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, and the prints issued from the documentation of both. Photographs from the series were exhibited at the Caracas museum in February 1998 in Desde el cuerpo: Alegorías de lo femenino.
Exhibitions
"El Peso De La Culpa Series"
“VI Bienal de La Habana: El individuo y su memoria,” Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam, Havana, Cuba, May 3 – June 8, 1997 (Parallel action at the artist's residence, Tejadillo 214, Havana Vieja, performed May 4, 1997, the day after the biennial opened. The artist's curriculum vitae records the action as a solo exhibition under the title El peso de la culpa, Tejadillo 214, Havana, 1997. Chromogenic prints documenting the forty-five-minute action were subsequently produced and exhibited.)
“Desde el cuerpo: Alegorías de lo femenino,” Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela, opened February 15, 1998, curated by Carmen Hernández (Photographic documentation of the 1997 performance exhibited.)
“Cuba: Los mapas del deseo / Landkarten der Sehnsucht / Maps of Desire,” Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria, March 19 – May 30, 1999, curated by Eugenio Valdés Figueroa and Gerald Matt (Corresponds to the catalogue cited in Literature at pages 156–157.)
“Tania Bruguera: Esercizio di Resistenza,” Franco Soffiantino Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy, November 27, 2003 – January 24, 2004, curated by Roberto Pinto.
“Portraits,” Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria, 2006, curated by Gerald Matt and Silvia Höller.
“For sale,” Galería Juana de Aizpuru, Madrid, Spain, 2006.
“Portraits,” Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Kiel, Germany, July 22 – September 17, 2006 (Second venue of the Kunsthalle Wien project; joint catalogue, Höller, Matt and Luckow, König, 2006.)
“Global Feminisms,” The Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY, United States, 2007, curated by Maura Reilly.
“Cuba Avant-Garde: Contemporary Cuban Art from the Farber Collection,” Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, United States, 2007, and touring (Illustrated in the accompanying catalogue at page 57.)
“Cuba: Art and History from 1868 to Today,” The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada, 2008, curated by Nathalie Bondil.
“Arte ≠ Vida: Actions by Artists of the Americas, 1960–2000,” El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY, United States, January 31 – May 18, 2008, curated by Deborah Cullen (And touring venues in Mexico and Colombia through 2011.)
“Tania Bruguera: On the Political Imaginary,” Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York, Purchase, NY, United States, January 28 – April 11, 2010, curated by Helaine Posner (First career survey, awarded through the Roy R. Neuberger Exhibition Prize; featured the chromogenic print and related performance documentation from the Weight of Guilt series.)
“Crisis. América Latina: Arte y Confrontación, 1910-2010,” itinerant exhibition, 2011–2012, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, Mexico; Banco de la República and Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, Colombia; Museo Arocena, Torreón, Mexico, curated by Gerardo Mosquera.
“VALOARTE,” humanitarian auction, Museo de Arte Costarricense (MAC), San José, Costa Rica, 2012, curated by Octavio Zaya.
“25 years of the Mudam Collection,” Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d'Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, November 21, 2020 – May 29, 2023, curated by Lisa Baldelli and Marie-Noëlle Farcy (Mudam's impression exhibited: The Burden of Guilt, 1997-1999, inkjet print, 150 x 98 cm, Collection Mudam Luxembourg, acquisition 2011.)
“Juan Francisco Elso: Por América,” El Museo del Barrio, New York, New York, October 27, 2022 – March 26, 2023.
“Juan Francisco Elso: Por América,” Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, May 6 – September 17, 2023.
“Juan Francisco Elso: Por América,” Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, North Miami, Florida, November 1, 2023 – March 17, 2024.
Literature
“Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas,” edited by Coco Fusco, Routledge, London and New York, 1999 : pages 152–153 (illustrated and discussed as a key work in the volume.)
“Cuba: Maps of Desire,” edited by Eugenio Valdés Figueroa et al., Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, 1999 : pages 156–157 (discussed and illustrated.)
“Art Cuba: The New Generation,” edited by Holly Block, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2001 : page 52 (illustrated.)
“Holy Terrors: Latin American Women Perform,” edited by Diana Taylor and Roselyn Costantino, Duke University Press, Durham, 2003 (discussed and illustrated in the chapter “Performing Greater Cuba: Tania Bruguera and the Burden of Guilt.”)
“Tania Bruguera: Esercizio di Resistencia,” edited by Roberto Pinto, bilingual Italian/English edition, Franco Soffiantino Arte Contemporanea, Turin, 2003 (discussed and illustrated.)
“Performance: Live Art Since the 60s,” by RoseLee Goldberg, Thames & Hudson, London and New York, 2004 (discussed and illustrated.)
“Tania Bruguera,” La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, 2005 (official exhibition catalogue for the 51st International Art Exhibition – The Experience of Art, curated by María de Corral.)
“Tania Bruguera,” Galería Juana de Aizpuru / La Biennale di Venezia, Madrid, 2006 (softcover, bilingual).
“Cuba Avant-Garde: Contemporary Cuban Art from the Farber Collection,” edited by Abelardo Mena Chicuri, 2007 : page 57 (discussed pp. 54–58) (illustrated and discussed.)
“Tania Bruguera: On the Political Imaginary,” edited by Helaine Posner, Gerardo Mosquera, and Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Charta / Neuberger Museum of Art, Milan and Purchase, 2009 (dedicated monograph/catalog accompanying the 2010 exhibition; discusses and illustrates the work as a foundational piece.)
“To and from Utopia in the New Cuban Art,” by Rachel Weiss, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2011
“Great Women Artists,” Phaidon Press, London and New York, 2019 : page 79 (mentioned and illustrated.)
“The Sense of Brown,” by José Esteban Muñoz, Duke University Press, Durham, 2020 : Chapter 9 (“Performing Greater Cuba: Tania Bruguera and the Burden of Guilt”), pages 86–99 (dedicated chapter discussion.)
“Tania Bruguera: Let Truth Be, Though the World Perish,” edited by Diego Sileo, 2020 (discussed and illustrated as a key early work.)
“Juan Francisco Elso: Essays on América,” edited by Olga Viso, El Museo del Barrio and [NAME] Publications, 2023: page 359 (illustrated).