Join us for an evening with Cuban artist Tania Bruguera. Learn about the work she is currently developing in her Harvard studio and how these new commissions connect to—and extend—her expansive body of work. Tania Bruguera will be joined in a conversation at ArtLab by Carrie Lambert-Beatty and David Joselit, Harvard Professors in the Art, Film and Visual Studies Department.
The artist Tania Bruguera makes work that connects art to everyday political life, focusing on the transformation of social affect into political effectiveness. Her exhibitions, performances and long-term projects have been intensive interventions on the institutional structure of collective memory, education, and politics. Born and raised in Havana, she has long engaged with the Cuban Revolution’s promises and failures through performances, exhibitions, and complex participatory projects.
Bruguera earned her MFA in performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the founder and director of Cátedra Arte de Conducta (Behavior Art School), the first performance studies program in Latin America. Bruguera’s work has been exhibited at documenta 11, the Guggenheim Museum, and Tate Modern and also at the Bienal Iberoamericana de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, the Gwangju Biennale, the Istanbul Biennial, and Shanghai Biennale. Her work is in the permanent collections of many institutions around the world, including the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana, and the Museum of Modern Art, in New York.
At Harvard University, Bruguera is Senior Lecturer in Media & Performance in Theater, Dance & Media, and Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies. She was previously a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute. Read more about Tania Bruguera in the Harvard Gazette. Photo: Nicolas Wefer
Tania Bruguera, Senior Lecturer in Media & Performance in Theater, Dance & Media, and Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard. Bruguera earned her MFA in performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the founder and director of Cátedra Arte de Conducta (Behavior Art School), the first performance studies program in Latin America. Bruguera’s work has been exhibited at documenta 11, the Guggenheim Museum, and Tate Modern and also at the Bienal Iberoamericana de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, the Gwangju Biennale, the Istanbul Biennial, and Shanghai Biennale. Her work is in the permanent collections of many institutions around the world, including the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana, and the Museum of Modern Art, in New York. Bruguera was previously a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute and serves on the ArtLab’s Faculty Advisory Committee. Photo: Tony Rinaldo.
Carrie Lambert-Beatty Professor of History of Art and Architecture and of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard. Within the history of contemporary art, Carrie Lambert-Beatty’s research interests include performance, political and activist art, reception and spectatorship, and the aesthetics of deception. She is the author of the book Being Watched: Yvonne Rainer and the 1960s and essays including “Twelve Miles: Boundaries of the New Art/Activism,” and “Make Believe: Parafiction and Plausibility.” She is a co-editor of October magazine. Prof. Lambert-Beatty holds a joint appointment in HAA and the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies. Read more about Carrie Lambert- Beatty
David Joselit Chair for Art, Film and Visual Studies (AFVS) Department and Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor. Joselit began his career as a curator at The ICA in Boston from 1983-1989. After receiving his PhD from Harvard in 1995, he has taught at the University of California, Irvine, and Yale University where he was Department Chair of History of Art from 2006-09, and the CUNY Graduate Center. Joselit is author of Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp 1910-1941 (MIT, 1998), American Art Since 1945 (Thames and Hudson, 2003), Feedback: Television Against Democracy (MIT, 2007), After Art (Princeton University Press, 2012) and Heritage and Debt: Art in Globalization (MIT, 2020) which was awarded the 2021 Robert Motherwell Book Award. He co-organized the exhibition, “Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age,” which opened at the Brandhorst Museum in Munich in 2015. Joselit is an editor of the journal OCTOBER and writes regularly on contemporary art and culture. His most recent book is Art’s Properties (Princeton University Press, 2023). Read more about David Joselit in the Harvard Gazette. Photo: Stephanie Mitchell/ Harvard University
This event is part of ArtsThursdays, a university-wide initiative supported by the Harvard University Committee on the Arts (HUCA). Please note that ArtLab does not have parking, and street parking in the area is limited. Ride-share and public transit are recommended.
@Jacopo La Forgia