Star Tribune features Coco Fusco exhibit and lecture at St. Olaf
In a Star Tribune feature, visual arts critic and reporter Alicia Eler explores the newest art exhibit by Coco Fusco, Swimming on Dry Land/Nadar en Seco, recently installed in St. Olaf College’s Flaten Art Museum and on display through December 18.
The exhibit explores the political side of the Cuban Revolution through the artist’s own struggles and narrative. Fusco speaks of the meaning behind her work, explaining “Visitors to Cuba invariably arrive because they are obsessed with its past. For Cubans, however, there is an ongoing struggle, both to shape a vision of a postrevolutionary future and to address suppressed events from the past and present. My work is part of that effort.”
Eler describes one of the works, CONFIDENCIAL: autores firmantes (CONFIDENTIAL: Signatory Authors), as “a series of 21 re-creations of official Cuban documents from 1971, outlining the government’s methodologies for censoring publications by intellectuals labeled ‘anti-Cuban.'” She also sings the artist’s praises, writing “Fusco sees the bigger picture. She’s been traveling to the island regularly for decades, forging ties with artists, trying to make sense of it all.”
The Flaten Art Museum will also feature a limited screening of Fusco’s Y entonces el mar te habla (And the Sea Will Talk To You) in its galleries from October 22-26 and a lecture by the artist on October 29 at 7 p.m. in Boe Memorial Chapel. All events and exhibitions are free and open to the public.
