Performing exile: Cuban-American women’s performance art, 1972-2014

This dissertation examines Ana Mendieta, Carmelita Tropicana, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, and Coco Fusco together, arguing that their work embodies diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba in the late twentieth century, such as the 1960 embargo and 2001 Third Border Initiative. Case studies of select works by each artist use archival research, close readings, and discourse, performance, and visual analyses in conversation with critical race, intersectional feminist, and queer theoretical lenses to show how they use the body in performance and performative works—as well as in installation, photo, and video documentation—to track the experience of exile from political event to its impact on the diaspora community through policy’s scripting of citizenship. The project closes with a meditation on the resonating effects of exile as seen in the relationship between Cuban artist Tania Bruguera’s attempt to restage 2009’s Tatlin’s Whisper #6 and President Barack Obama’s 2014 announcement of normalizing relations between the two nations.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Art History

Grantor

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2020

Author dc:creator

• Rodriguez, Susana "Xuxa"

Contributors dc:contributor

• Vázquez, Oscar E.
• Rodríguez, Richard T.
• Ruiz, Sandra
• Weissman, Terri

• Art History
• American Art
• Latinx Art
• Women's Art
• Feminist Art
• Contemporary Art
• Performance Art
• Performance Studies
• María Magdalena Campos-Pons
• Coco Fusco
• Ana Mendieta
• Carmelita Tropicana

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2020 Susana "Xuxa" Rodriguez.

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/108303

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/108303