Body of Silence


Tania Bruguera 1997-1998

Performance installation

Materials: Room, lamb meat, nails, elementary school primer on Cuban history, pen, saliva

Photo: Marcos Castillo

This piece consists of a box lined with lamb meat with a small entrance from which actions can be followed.  The artist, naked, sitting in a corner, “corrects” a book of Cuban history published by the state to be used in schools.  Trapped by the fear of the consequences her actions might imply, she starts to lick what she has written, in an attempt at self-censorship, tearing and destroying the paper that she then swallows.

4
w200