Artists have always looked to blur the fine lines among life, politics and art. Joseph Beuys, for instance, planted trees as ecological sculpture - thousands of them. Gordon Matta-Clark was the one who opted to stockpile useless slivers of Manhattan real estate for illustrating property ownership’s absurdity.
This tradition carries in Tania Bruguera’s work. The Cuban-born artist has created the equivalent of a performance piece ‘the Immigrant Movement International in Corona, Queens’. Made as a gesture of solidarity with those who illegally live in foreign countries, the movement is run from a Roosevelt Avenue storefront.
The New York Times art critic, Holland Cotter, mentions: “When Ms. Bruguera first set up the project in Corona in 2011, with financing from Creative Time and the Queens Museum of Art, skeptics assumed that it was an artist’s ego trip. A year and a half later, and with most of the money gone, the work is still in progress.”
There a tiny staff along with a roster of volunteers, several of them artists, conduct a program - free and seven days a week - of practical assistance apart from consciousness-raising activities aimed at neighborhood residents. Many of them are new arrivals from Mexico and Ecuador.
Services include computer instruction and legal advice. But there are reading lessons as well to double as apt introductions to art history, emphasizing on the life tales of artists in the past; tai chi; health classes incorporating meditation and theater workshops, which function as safe places for working out stress, reimagining reality and rehearsing political interventions.
One important goal of the Immigrant Movement International is to generate awareness of the civil rights for immigrants and bring the same into public realm. How to attain it effectively is the issue. And this exactly is the focus of community meetings.
The merging of life and art as envisioned by Ms. Bruguera envisions is a constantly evolving concept. Some people sought straightforward protest marches; a few others supported subtler forms of mass demonstration, with its roots in street theater. Everyone basically understood the core of politics-as-performance idea, ready to go with it.
This tradition carries in Tania Bruguera’s work. The Cuban-born artist has created the equivalent of a performance piece ‘the Immigrant Movement International in Corona, Queens’. Made as a gesture of solidarity with those who illegally live in foreign countries, the movement is run from a Roosevelt Avenue storefront.
The New York Times art critic, Holland Cotter, mentions: “When Ms. Bruguera first set up the project in Corona in 2011, with financing from Creative Time and the Queens Museum of Art, skeptics assumed that it was an artist’s ego trip. A year and a half later, and with most of the money gone, the work is still in progress.”
There a tiny staff along with a roster of volunteers, several of them artists, conduct a program - free and seven days a week - of practical assistance apart from consciousness-raising activities aimed at neighborhood residents. Many of them are new arrivals from Mexico and Ecuador.
Services include computer instruction and legal advice. But there are reading lessons as well to double as apt introductions to art history, emphasizing on the life tales of artists in the past; tai chi; health classes incorporating meditation and theater workshops, which function as safe places for working out stress, reimagining reality and rehearsing political interventions.
One important goal of the Immigrant Movement International is to generate awareness of the civil rights for immigrants and bring the same into public realm. How to attain it effectively is the issue. And this exactly is the focus of community meetings.
The merging of life and art as envisioned by Ms. Bruguera envisions is a constantly evolving concept. Some people sought straightforward protest marches; a few others supported subtler forms of mass demonstration, with its roots in street theater. Everyone basically understood the core of politics-as-performance idea, ready to go with it.
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