Briefing
Tania Bruguera announces that she is running for president of Cuba; Kader Attia opens an exhibition and events space in Paris
Tania Bruguera announces that she is running for president of Cuba; Kader Attia opens an exhibition and events space in Paris
- Cuban artist/activist Tania Bruguera challenged Cuba’s closed party political system last week when, during a video aired at the 2016 Creative Time Summit in Washington D.C., she announced that she would run in Cuba’s 2018 presidential race – ‘to change the culture of fear.’ The proposition was a hypothetical one (Cuba’s single-party system means that the president is elected by the National Assembly), made in order to underscore how Cubans should have the ability to choose their leader for themselves. ‘People should be able to have this fantasy of another political system’, she said, adding that her video was ‘a way of creating a new political imaginary.’
- Paris-born artist Kader Attia, whose work was acquired by the Contemporary Art Society Collections Fund at this year’s Frieze London, opened a new, three-storey exhibition and events space yesterday in Paris. The new space, which is named La Colonie and is located near to the Gare du Nord train, will host workshops, conferences, lectures and readings, and attempt to ‘gather people from all horizons, from academics to social workers in the banlieues [suburbs] who educate young boys and girls.’
- Galerie Bob van Orsouw in Zurich, which was first established in 1988, has announced that it will cease operations by the end of 2016. The gallery, which is run by Bigna Pfenninger and Bob van Orsouw and represents the likes of Philip Akkerman, Nobuyoshi Araki, Ernesto Neto, Julian Opie and Walter Pfeiffer, will remain open until that point, but only on an ‘irregular basis’.
- In 2018, the last exam board in England offering an A-level in art history will drop the subject, the latest in a governmental cull of what have been termed 'soft subjects' following the curriculum changes made by the former education secretary Michael Gove. The decision has been widely criticized, with Caroline Osborne, a founder trustee of the Art History In Schools campaign group, condemning the move as 'crazy, completely crazy'. British artist Cornelia Parker added: ‘Now more than ever, as we face Brexit, we have to fully understand what our cultural capital is and how we can best use it. We should be widening our cultural knowledge not shrinking it.’
- The Venezuelan collectors Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and Gustavo Cisneros have donated more than 100 works of Latin American art to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, ahead of its expansion, which is expected to open by 2020. The donated works, which date from the 1940s to 1990s, come from 37 artists working in Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina and Uruguay.
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