January 8 update: Bruguera seems to be under some form of house arrest.
As we celebrate the new year with friends and family, and use this winter break to contemplate our plans for the year, we should take a moment to consider the situation of Cuban artist Tania Bruguera.
As of this writing, she remains in detention in Cuba after having announced a project, #YoTambiénExijo, which invited her fellow Cubans to come to Havana’s Revolution Square and spend a minute each speaking of their vision for the country. The project was conceived after Cuba and the U.S. announced their intentions to normalize relations. The event never took place.
This project, simple, brave and urgent, reminds us of Antony Gormley’s One and Other and Rafael Lozano Hemmer’s Voz Alta. This genre of work has inspired our own thinking as we are in the early phase of conceptualizing public art projects for Arlington County’s Courthouse Square planning process. Our concerns, and our freedom to explore them, are put into a sober context by Tania Bruguera’s detention.