Xuxa (Susana) Rodriguez

My dissertation examines the work of four Cuban-American women artists who use the body in politically explicit performance art: Ana Mendieta, Carmelita Tropicana, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, and Coco Fusco. My project brings new knowledge to the field by demonstrating how the use of the body in performance art by these women allows for a unique expression of Cuban exile identity that is both distinct from the way in which exile has been expressed in the visual arts and also historically bound to the political relationship between Cuba and the U.S. I argue their work reveals how the U.S. embargo against Cuba (1960 to 2014) has shaped CubanAmerican art and identity to produce new notions of Americanness through their performances of exile.

Using the period of artistic production from 1972 through 2014 as this dissertation’s analytical timeframe, I craft four chapters as case studies of major works by each artist in relation to the Cuban exile diaspora and U.S. foreign policy since the 1959 Cuban revolution propelled mass immigration to the U.S. I conclude with a discussion of the ways in which works by Cuban artist Tania Bruguera are impacted by leadership and policy transitions to illustrate the effects that performance art has had and will continue to have—along with President Obama’s 2014 announcement to normalize relations between the two nations—as the political bridge between Cuba and the U.S. is rebuilt. My project is the first to critically engage Mendieta, Tropicana, Campos-Pons, and Fusco together in the context of the Cuban exile diaspora in the U.S. and its historical development, expanding research on the diaspora beyond Miami, FL, and considering how disparate locations produce radically different performances of exile. Ultimately, I examine these women’s work as American art to trouble this category and demonstrate the complexity and diversity of U.S. national identity.