El Museo del Barrio is celebrating one of the most fearless and thought-provoking voices in contemporary art with Coco Fusco: Tomorrow, I Will Become an Island — the first U.S. survey of the acclaimed Cuban-American artist and writer. Opening this fall, the exhibition captures more than three decades of Fusco’s groundbreaking work across performance, film, photography, installation, and text.
Known for her incisive exploration of power, politics, and cultural identity, Fusco has built a career interrogating how institutions, history, and representation intersect. From her provocative early performances to her recent investigations of post-revolutionary Cuba and U.S. political life, Fusco continues to push audiences to confront uncomfortable truths about race, gender, and colonialism.
The exhibition’s title mirrors her 2023 monograph, Tomorrow, I Will Become an Island, and reflects both a personal and artistic metaphor for autonomy, exile, and resistance. Organized by Susanna V. Temkin, El Museo’s interim chief curator, and Rodrigo Moura, former chief curator, the show traces Fusco’s evolution as an artist whose voice has shaped global conversations around art and activism.
Among the key works featured is her now-iconic 1992 performance Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West, created with Guillermo Gómez-Peña, in which the duo placed themselves in a cage to critique Western voyeurism and colonial fascination. The piece remains one of the most discussed performance artworks of the last three decades and is emblematic of Fusco’s daring approach to exposing systemic inequities.
Fusco’s achievements have been recognized worldwide. She has received numerous awards, including the 2023 Free Speech Defender Award from the National Coalition Against Censorship and the 2021 Latinx Artist Fellowship. Her work has been featured in prestigious venues such as the Venice Biennale, the Whitney Biennial, and the Centre Pompidou, and her pieces reside in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona.
Beyond the art world, Fusco is a prolific writer and cultural critic, contributing to The New York Review of Books and leading dialogues on artistic freedom and representation. A professor at The Cooper Union School of Art, she continues to inspire new generations of artists and thinkers.
Supported by the Ford Foundation and The Jacques & Natasha Gelman Foundation, Coco Fusco: Tomorrow, I Will Become an Island reaffirms Fusco’s place as one of the most influential voices of her time — an artist whose work challenges, provokes, and ultimately transforms how we see the world.