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Coco Fusco

The Empty Plaza / La Plaza Vacia

February 22–March 31, 2012

The Empty Plaza / La Plaza Vacia, 2012, Single-channel video with surround-sound, 00:11:52

The Empty Plaza / La Plaza Vacia, 2012

Single-channel video with surround-sound, 00:11:52

Installation view, Alexander Gray Associates, 2012

Coco Fusco, Installation view, Alexander Gray Associates, 2012

Coco Fusco, Installation view, Alexander Gray Associates, 2012

The Empty Plaza / La Plaza Vacia, 2012

The Empty Plaza / La Plaza Vacia, 2012
Coco FuscoInstallation view, Alexander Gray Associates, 2012

The Undiscovered Amerindians, 2012

The Undiscovered Amerindians, 2012
Coco Fusco, Installation view, Alexander Gray Associates, 2012

The Empty Plaza / La Plaza Vacia, 2012, Single-channel video with surround-sound, 00:11:52

The Empty Plaza / La Plaza Vacia, 2012

Single-channel video with surround-sound, 00:11:52

Edition of 3 with 1 AP

The Empty Plaza / La Plaza Vacia II, 2012, Digital Chromogenic Print; 26.13h x 39.5w in (66.37h x 100.33w cm)

The Empty Plaza / La Plaza Vacia II, 2012

Digital Chromogenic Print; 26.13h x 39.5w in (66.37h x 100.33w cm)

Edition of 3 with 1 AP

The Empty Plaza / La Plaza Vacia I, 2012, Digital Chromogenic Print, 25.38h x 39.5w in (64.47h x 100.33w cm)

The Empty Plaza / La Plaza Vacia I, 2012

Digital Chromogenic Print, 25.38h x 39.5w in (64.47h x 100.33w cm)

Edition of 3 with 1 AP

The Empty Plaza / La Plaza Vacia III (2012)

The Empty Plaza / La Plaza Vacia III (2012)
Digital Chromogenic Print; 26.13h x 39.5w in (66.37h x 100.33w cm); Edition of 3 with 1 AP

The Undiscovered Amerindians: "Oh Please!" Begged the Gentleman at the Whitney Biennial, 2012, Intaglio, engraving, and drypoint etching on paper, 21h x 18.3w in (53.3h x 46.5w cm)

The Undiscovered Amerindians: "Oh Please!" Begged the Gentleman at the Whitney Biennial, 2012

Intaglio, engraving, and drypoint etching on paper, 21h x 18.3w in (53.3h x 46.5w cm)

Edition of 8 with 2 APs

The Undiscovered Amerindians: How Can the Museum Justify Such Deception?, 2012, Intaglio, engraving, and drypoint etching on paper, 21h x 18.3w in (53.3h x 46.5w cm)

The Undiscovered Amerindians: How Can the Museum Justify Such Deception?, 2012

Intaglio, engraving, and drypoint etching on paper, 21h x 18.3w in (53.3h x 46.5w cm)

Edition of 8 with 2 APs

The Undiscovered Amerindians: I've Seen Pictures of Their Island in National Geographic!, 2012, Intaglio, engraving, and drypoint etching on paper, 21h x 18.3w in (53.3h x 46.5w cm)

The Undiscovered Amerindians: I've Seen Pictures of Their Island in National Geographic!, 2012

Intaglio, engraving, and drypoint etching on paper, 21h x 18.3w in (53.3h x 46.5w cm)

Edition of 8 with 2 APs

The Undiscovered Amerindians: I Enjoyed Your Show, 2012, Intaglio, engraving, and drypoint etching on paper, 21h x 18.3w in (53.3h x 46.5w cm)

The Undiscovered Amerindians: I Enjoyed Your Show, 2012

Intaglio, engraving, and drypoint etching on paper, 21h x 18.3w in (53.3h x 46.5w cm)

Edition of 8 with 2 APs

The Undiscovered Amerindians: "Oh Wow!" Gushed Annie Sprinkle, 2012, Intaglio, engraving, and drypoint etching on paper, 21h x 18.3w in (53.3h x 46.5w cm)

The Undiscovered Amerindians: "Oh Wow!" Gushed Annie Sprinkle, 2012

Intaglio, engraving, and drypoint etching on paper, 21h x 18.3w in (53.3h x 46.5w cm)

Edition of 8 with 2 APs

The Undiscovered Amerindians: ¡Oye Guati-Guapa!, 2012, Intaglio, engraving, and drypoint etching on paper, 21h x 18.3w in (53.3h x 46.5w cm)

The Undiscovered Amerindians: ¡Oye Guati-Guapa!, 2012

Intaglio, engraving, and drypoint etching on paper, 21h x 18.3w in (53.3h x 46.5w cm)

Edition of 8 with 2 APs

The Undiscovered Amerindians: If People Thought You Were Real, Didn't You Fail?, 2012, Intaglio, engraving, and drypoint etching on paper, 21h x 18.3w in (53.3h x 46.5w cm)

The Undiscovered Amerindians: If People Thought You Were Real, Didn't You Fail?, 2012

Intaglio, engraving, and drypoint etching on paper, 21h x 18.3w in (53.3h x 46.5w cm)

Edition of 8 with 2 APs

The Undiscovered Amerindians: "Mummy! Mummy!" Cried the Child, 2012, Intaglio, engraving, and drypoint etching on paper, 21h x 18.3w in (53.3h x 46.5w cm)

The Undiscovered Amerindians: "Mummy! Mummy!" Cried the Child, 2012

Intaglio, engraving, and drypoint etching on paper, 21h x 18.3w in (53.3h x 46.5w cm)

Edition of 8 with 2 APs

The Undiscovered Amerindians: "They Are Too White to Be Indians," Said the Skeptic, 2012, Intaglio, engraving, and drypoint etching on paper, 21h x 18.3w in (53.3h x 46.5w cm)

The Undiscovered Amerindians: "They Are Too White to Be Indians," Said the Skeptic, 2012

Intaglio, engraving, and drypoint etching on paper, 21h x 18.3w in (53.3h x 46.5w cm)

Edition of 8 with 2 APs

The Undiscovered Amerindians: I Noticed That She Has No Hair on Her Legs, 2012, Intaglio, engraving, and drypoint etching on paper, 21h x 18.3w in (53.3h x 46.5w cm)

The Undiscovered Amerindians: I Noticed That She Has No Hair on Her Legs, 2012

Intaglio, engraving, and drypoint etching on paper, 21h x 18.3w in (53.3h x 46.5w cm)

Edition of 8 with 2 APs

Press Release

Coco Fusco
The Empty Plaza / La Plaza Vacia


Alexander Gray Associates presented New York-based artist Coco Fusco’s first solo exhibition with the Gallery.

The cornerstone of the exhibition, The Empty Plaza/La Plaza Vacia is a single-channel video. Inspired by the organized public protests in the Middle East beginning in 2011, the artist took note of the communal spaces around the world being utilized and, in contrast, those left empty.

For Fusco’s new work, the empty Plaza de la Revolución in Havana, Cuba becomes the protagonist in her meditation on public space, revolutionary promise, and memory. Intermittent close-range views bring the Plaza’s architecture into focus; long takes documenting Fusco’s passage through the vacant square are punctuated by vintage archival footage depicting scenes from Post-Revolutionary Cuba. Throughout the duration of the video, a Spanish narration, written by acclaimed Cuban journalist Yoani Sanchez, describes what appears—and does not appear—in view. Also on exhibit are film stills from The Empty Plaza. Cinematic in impact, the images are dominated by a broad horizon line as the large sky and the vast civic plaza are nearly equalized.

“The absence of public in some plazas seemed just as resonant and provocative as its presence in others,” Fusco recalls. “Cuba’s Plaza of the Revolution is one such place—a stark, inhospitable arena where all the major political events of the past half-century have been marked by mass choreography, militarized displays and rhetorical flourish. I decided to create a piece about that legendary site—an empty stage filled with memories, through which every foreigner visitor passes, while nowadays many, if not most, Cubans flee.”

2012 marked the twentieth anniversary of Fusco’s seminal collaborative performance work with Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Couple in the Cage: Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West and its presentation in the legendary 1993 Whitney Biennial. Fusco revisits this important work through a series of new engravings, which are on view at the Gallery. Rendered in the style of Nineteenth-century caricatures, Fusco’s recollections of audience responses to the Amerindians performance weave a humorous yet unsettling narrative, exposing the residue of colonial stereotypes in contemporary culture. While looking back, the new works underscore the long-lasting effects of Colonialism that remain prevalent in the contemporary art world, in spite of broad cultural progress since the early-1990s platforms of institutional-critique and multiculturalism.