Coco Fusco salutes in A Room of One’s Own: Women and Power in the New America, 2006. Image: Artist

Okwui Enwezor was not just an outstanding curator, he was also a man of style.

BY KAZAD

One of the artists that worked with Okwui Enwezor during his lifetime is Coco Fusco. The artist was in several shows curated by Okwui. A Cuban American, Coco Fusco explores the issues of gender, identity, race, and power relationship in her works. Through performance, video, interactive installation, and critical writings, she also engages viewers and readers on the issues related to colonialism and exile.

Coco Fusco was one of the artists that participated in the 56th Venice Biennale curated by Okwui Enwezor. Okwui was the first African-born curator to organize the Venice Biennale. Titled The Worlds Features, the project featured artist from across the globe who addressed salient global issues. From politics to terrorism and world economics, the artists used the opportunity to raise questions about issues important to them.

‘The Confession’ at Venice Biennale

Coco Fusco’s entry in the Venice Biennale was titled The Confession, a digital black and white color sound 30′ video. The film easy centered on the now infamous confession of the Cuban poet Herbeto Padilla. In 1971, the poet was arrested in Cuba for criticizing the government.  During his arrest, Padilla made a statement that he was a counterrevolutionary. Coco Fusco used the words of the poet who was at the center of the Padilla affairs, to make statements about the repression of opposition and dissenting voices in Cuba.

In The Confession, Fusco brought to the fore legacy of the oppressive nature of the Cuban government and how Cubans were silenced.  Although the focus was on Herbeto Padilla, the film references many other everyday Cubans who were the subject of oppressive rule. Using archival documents, including oral histories, partial testimonies, visual documents, and other fragments she told the story of an oppressive Cuban experience.

Fusco used Herbeto Padilla’s as the pedestal for understanding the Cuban oppressive regime.

When it happened, the arrest of Herbeto Padilla was staged as media spectacle by the Cuban State and this is well reflected in the film. However, what is also indicated in the film is how the narrative surrounding the event has changed over time. In her film, Coco Fusco interrogates how Padilla’s fearless castigation of the Cuba regimes marked the turning point in Cuba’s intellectual history and the convoluted relationship between culture and politics at large.

The experience of the oppressed has been the focus of Coco Fusco’s works for many years. Issues of immigration and international politics are the core elements of her works and writings. At the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale organized by Okwui, Coco Fusco presented Rite of Passage, a performance that highlighted the institutionalization of apartheid and the oppression of black South Africans. In her performance, she reenacted one of apartheid’s cruelest means of control over the movement of people through public spaces. 

During the apartheid era, Black South African were mandated by lay to get their passes stamped before moving from one part of the country to another. Wearing a security uniform like those worn by the South African oppressive forces during apartheid, she issued and stamped required passes to all Biennale visitors.

Coco Fusco on Okwui Enwezor

For many years, Coco Fusco worked with Okwui, forming a strong bond. So deep was the relationship that she wrote this touching tribute to her dear friend and colleague after his death.

BY COCO FUSCO

In the days since the news of Okwui’s death was made public, he has been eulogized as a brilliant curator and thinker who transformed the landscape of contemporary art. And that he was—a true cultural giant in a field where many imagine themselves to be grander than they actually are. The reality that he was a self-made immigrant without the usual art-world pedigrees made his acumen and meteoric rise all the more inspiring. Okwui established a global view of artistic practice as the standard for the field, making narrower models of internationalism feel obsolete.

Though New York served as a base for much of his career, he never treated it as the sum total of what counted in art. On the contrary, he took American art institutions to task for their chauvinism, and gave a much-needed kick in the pants to artists of all backgrounds whose concerns he saw as too parochial. His vision of what an exhibition could do was exhilarating, and his insistence on taking art seriously was a welcome relief from market-driven frivolity. He worked harder than seemed humanly possible, and sometimes exhausted his colleagues in the process. He also expected audiences to open themselves to difficult subjects, challenging tactics, and unusually long hours of viewing. There were critics who, for example, grumbled that his Documenta was just too much, but their complaints sounded like petulance from lightweights to those of us who wanted more from art.

Okwui showed everyone how art could speak eloquently and urgently about the world, and this earned him the respect of colleagues and artists across the globe

Okwui showed everyone how art could speak eloquently and urgently about the world, and this earned him the respect of colleagues and artists across the globe. I count myself among those artists whose endeavors would never have been given a significant platform had it not been for his tireless advocacy. Many of the artists of my generation who are now championed by institutions that once ignored our interests, our methods, and our cultures of origin know in our hearts that Okwui lifted us out of relative obscurity just two decades ago. Let us not forget that.

Okwui will not only be remembered for his astounding intelligence—he was also remarkable for his commanding presence, his wit, his sartorial panache, his graciousness as a dinner-party host and his talents as a chef, his love of poetry, and his extraordinary ability to land anywhere on planet earth and understand the significance of what lay before him. Since he passed, my mind has been flooded with memories of him—laughing, arguing, cajoling, and scolding me when he thought I should know better or push myself harder. I hope to be haunted by that voice for the rest of my days.