Written Response | The Burden of Guilt

Class 6  |  Written Response

Artist  |  Tania Bruguera

Artwork  |  The Burden of Guilt

Year  |  1997 - 1999

Location  |  Havana, Cuba

The Burden of Guilt, 1997 - 1999

This week I looked at the artist named Tania Bruguera and her specific art piece named “The Burden of Guilt”, 1997 - 1999.

 

The Burden of Guilt took aim at problems of power and control, social change, and poverty in Cuba. It is a 45 minute performance piece. 

 

Bruguera stood naked wearing only a lamb’s dead body hanging from her neck sliced open while eating soil that is mixed with salt and water. Soil, salt, and water are intentional representation art form that she attempted to convey through her personal experiences.

 At that time, Cuban was in turmoil, had been heavily relying and living under the power and control of the Soviet Union regime for 32 years. Cuba finally broke free in 1991 but the country lost its most valuable aid and income with almost 85% trade with the Soviet Union. The country is getting poorer so as the people. 

Bruguera was only 29 when she performed The Burden of Guilt, she’s a young Cuban woman eating dirt in an old Havana in cuban’s land.  Helplessly ingesting the toxic soil, water and salt embodied tears washing the Cuban’s land into her body, slowly poisoning herself with it. Hence, Bruguera used her body as her subjective object, however, it also symbolizes  the Cuban people were eating dirt also. They were all struggling for a better life.

Where she chose to perform was also significant and effective, because her performance was at the Cuba’s Biennial where there are international visitors, artist’s, passer-by hence the space became the street which resembles the public artwork. Her performance was her personal experience and she showed endurance, struggle, and sacrifices of the Cuban people.It is very heartbreaking to watch the video(below) because, personally, I find it very politically provocative art work and loud as though she was screaming out loud, crying for help. I find it difficult to distinguish Bruguera’s performance from reality. 
 

" The Cuban Indians ate dirt as a weapon of resistance.  They are from earth where they had been born, which is to say, they ate their ancestors, them-selves, their history, their memory, as if they were committing a cultural suicide. "
 
" “The Burden of Guilt” is the recovery and realignment of this story.  The burden is really the slaughtered lamb that hangs from the neck like a shield, like an open wound that reveals what’s inside.  The lamb is the weight that is carried as a consequence, as well as a symbolic attitude; the emotion, saltwater, which drops like tears and washes the earth, which is the guilt, before it is digested. "
Tania Bruguera

The Burden of Guilt II  [ I couldn't find the original one that she performed in Havana. This is a similar piece. ]