Cuban television continues its campaign to discredit the artists of the 27N and the San Isidro Movement. Tania Bruguera was the victim this Thursday of the manipulation broadcast on the news.
In the program Cuban reasons, lasting more than 17 minutes, they tried to reduce Bruguera’s work to “a character manufactured by the United States” and who seeks, according to them, “to conquer the symbolic space against the country’s institutions.” They even questioned the sale of the artist’s works.
According to state propaganda, Bruguera’s work lacks artistic qualities and is inspired by the supposed manuals that led to the elimination of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). “I believe that the creative capacity of his work, as art, has suffered as a result of an increase in actions that could hardly be described as artistic,” said Fernando Rojas, Vice Minister of Culture.
On Cuban television they said that Bruguera “was little known in the art scene of the 90s and was chosen for a scholarship in the United States in 1999.” They also insisted on US financing plans to create counterrevolutionary figures.
“What better performance for Tania Bruguera than a youth demonstration?”, Said the report. The Cuban government tries to ignore that the peaceful meeting in front of the Ministry of Culture (MINCULT) on November 27, 2020 was spontaneous due to the eviction of the San Isidro Movement.
The announcer Idania Martínez Grandal went on to say that the independent media are trying “to ignore the fundamental support offered by cultural institutions to contemporary art in Cuba, which includes the work of artists such as Bruguera herself.”
Nevertheless, Cuban reasons He omitted that Bruguera was recognized with the Distinction for National Culture in 2002 and was a member of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC). In 2015, the artist returned that recognition to MINCULT and ceased to be a member of UNEAC.
“I cannot receive recognition, nor be part of an institution that speaks for all but where only the Presidency of the Organization signs. Cultural institutions that instead of opening a dialogue and a space for aesthetic analysis, criminalize, judge, reduce the response to a work in the generation of fear towards the work and that they also ignore it, “Bruguera said in a letter.
The report insisted only on dialogue with artists related to the Government, but did not report that after the aggression of January 27, 2021, there are two occasions in which the MINCULT refused to dialogue with artists and intellectuals of the 27N who ask for changes in Cuba like the end of censorship and repression.
The attack on Bruguera extended to the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, the lawyer Laritza Diversent and the activist Rosa María Payá.
Cuban television concluded with opinions of the artists who met with MINCULT officials. “Sovereignty has to be the limit, social conquests have to be the limits. The constitutional rights, which 80-something Cubans vote for, have to be a limit. Because it cannot be that your right is violated most of them, “said José Ernesto Nováez, essayist and vice president of the Hermanos Saíz Association.
Until the closing of this news, Tania Bruguera did not speak directly about the report broadcast on Cuban television. The artist only shared a text by journalist Camila Acosta on her page of Facebook, with the hastag of the NTV campaign lies.
“You have to be a fool to think that a single person could be capable of manipulating hundreds of people prepared, cultured and capable of thinking for themselves, who are moved by love and the desire to be free. Everyone’s claim that day (November 27), and until today, has been genuine, and that is what those who hold power in Cuba fear, “said Acosta.
For his part, journalist José Raúl Gallego recalled that “one of Tania Bruguera’s works (Tatlin’s whisper 5) was selected by the newspaper The Guardian among the 25 most significant works of art produced in the 21st century “.
“It is so hard to question the work of Tania, that the newscast could not catch a single art critic to put him down. They had to use two State Security agents, a journalist who goes from blunder to blunder, a deputy minister that nobody respects and who knows more about censorship than about art, and a little-known writer, “he said in Facebook.
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