Artist

Coco Fusco

Coco Fusco is an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in New York. She is a recipient of a 2023 Free Speech Defender Award from the National Coalition Against Censorship, a 2021 American Academy of Arts and Letters Art Award, a 2021 Latinx Artist Fellowship, a 2021 Anonymous Was a Woman award, a 2018 Rabkin Prize for Art Criticism, a 2016 Greenfield Prize, a 2014 Cintas Fellowship, a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2013 Absolut Art Writing Award, a 2013 Fulbright Fellowship, a 2012 US Artists Fellowship and a 2003 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts.

Fusco's performances and videos have been presented at the 56th Venice Biennale, the Sharjah Biennale, Frieze Special Projects, Basel Unlimited, three Whitney Biennials (2022, 2008, and 1993), and several other international exhibitions. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Walker Art Center, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Whitney Museum, the Centre Pompidou, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona. A retrospective entitled Tomorrow I Will Become an Island opened at KW Institute of Contemporary Art in Berlin in September, 2023. An accompanying monograph with the same title was published by Thames & Hudson.

Fusco is the author of Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba (2015). She is also the author of English is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas (1995), The Bodies that Were Not Ours and Other Writings (2001), and A Field Guide for Female Interrogators (2008). She is the editor of Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas (1999) and Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self (2003). She contributes regularly to The New York Review of Books and numerous art publications.

Fusco received her B.A. in Semiotics from Brown University (1982), her M.A. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University (1985), and her Ph.D. in Art and Visual Culture from Middlesex University (2007). Fusco is a Professor at the Cooper Union School of Art.

Artist Code: 897

Videography

TED Ethology: Primate Visions of the Human Mind

2015, 50:00 minutes, colour, English

Operation Atropos

2006, 59:00 minutes, colour, English

Pochonovela

1995, 27:00 minutes, colour, English & Spanish

The Couple in the Cage: a Guatinaui Odyssey

1993, 30:00 minutes, colour, English, Spanish, also available Closed Captioned

Critical Writing

The (im)mobilities of assembly-line work
by Paula Brailovsky. Moving Image Review & Art Journal (MIRAJ), 2015, v. 4, no. 1&2.
Monopolies and Maquiladoras: The Resistant Re-encoding of Gaming...
by Claire Taylor. Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research, Dec. 2012, v. 18, no. 2.
"Try to Walk With the Sound of my Footsteps": The Surveillant Body...
by Kirsty Robertson. Sorting Daemons: Art, Surveillance Regimes and Social Control, 2010. Kingston: Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2010.
Operation Atropos
by Coco Fusco. Journal of Media Practice, 2010, v. 11, no. 1.
Pretending to Say: Provocation
by Sandra Ceballos Obaya and Coco Fusco. TDR: The Drama Review, 2010, v. 54, no. 3.
Dones Indomables
by Macu Morán. Barcelona: Centre de Cultura de Dones, 2009.
Gender, Power, and Pedagogy in Coco Fusco's Bare Life Study #1...
by Karen Beckman. Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, Spring 2009, v. 50, no. 1.
Performing the State of Exception: Coco Fusco's Operation Atropos...
by Jose Esteban Munoz. TDR: The Drama Review, 2008, v. 52, no. 1.
Participation, Flow, and the Redistribution of Authorship: The...
by Sara Diamond. Museums and the Web 2005: Proceedings, Mar. 31 Spring, 2005.
Performance biennial for NYC: The Challenges of collaborative...
by Not Attributed. Art in America, Nov. 2005, v. 93, no. 10.
On-Line Simulations/Real-Life Politics: A Discussion with Ricardo...
by Coco Fusco and Ricardo Dominguez. The Drama Review, Summer 2003, v. 47, no. 2.
Coco Fusco: How not to Sing an Anthem: A Discussion with Ricardo...
by Ana Nuño. Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Fall 2002, no. 16/17.
Inhaling Passions: Art, Sex and Scent: A Discussion with Ricardo...
by Jim Drobnick. Sexuality & Culture, Summer 2000, v. 4, no. 3.
Performing the Other: A Consideration Of Two Cages
by Mary Kate Kelly. College Literature, Winter 1999, v. 26, no. 1.
Culture crosser
by Rachel Kranz. The Women's Review of Books, Sept. 1995, v. 12, no. 12.
In Dialogue: The Couple in the Cage: A Guatinaui Odyssey
by Ruth Behar and Bruce Mannheim. Visual Anthropology Review, Spring 1995, v. 11, no. 1.
Biennale: Bond Store 3/4 and Art Gallery of New South Wales
by Charles Green. Artforum, Apr. 1993, v. 31, no. 8.
Culture in a Cage
by Donald Garfield. Museum News, Mar. Spring 1993.
Cuban Energy Crisis
by Coco Fusco. Afterimage, Feb. 1991, v. 18, no. 7.
Settling Accounts: Interviews with Three Chilean Filmmakers
by Coco Fusco. Afterimage, May 1990, v. 17, no. 10.
Fantasies of Oppositionality
by Coco Fusco. Afterimage, Dec. 1988, v. 16, no. 5.
Black Filmmaking in Britain's Workshop Sector
by Coco Fusco. Afterimage, Feb. 1988, v. 15, no. 7.
Video at Documenta
by Coco Fusco. Afterimage, Sept. 1987, v. 15, no. 2.