Art or Exploitation : Living as an Immigrant in Corona, Queens

4 Jun 2011

Full disclosure : I am a resident of Corona, Queens and partially grew up in this neighborhood. So perhaps my critique, concern, and commentary comes from a personal place. I also acknowledge that I am not an immigrant. My parents came to the U.S. from Puerto Rico so their immigrant experience is different than that of the immigrants that live in Corona, Queens. I own that as well.

I was supposed to participate in a poetry event today at Immigrant Movement International, just a few blocks from where I live.
I wondered what was this organization that I was being invited to share space with? I have lived at my current address in Corona for a number of years and had never seen or heard of it. Also many years of being involved in the Latino social justice movement here in NYC had me thinking I was pretty aware of the different organizations doing work.

Turns out Immigrant Movement International isn’t so much of a movement but rather the art project of one Cubana, Tania Bruguera.

From her website on the project :

Tania Bruguera’s Immigrant Movement International, presented by Creative Time and the Queens Museum of Art, is a long-term art project in the form of an artist-initiated socio-political movement. Bruguera will spend a year operating a flexible community space in the multinational and transnational neighborhood of Corona, Queens, which will serve as the movement’s headquarters. Engaging both local and international communities, as well as working with social service organizations, elected officials, and artists focused on immigration reform, Bruguera will examine growing concerns about the political representation and conditions facing immigrants.

As one of those artists, I decided not to engage Immigrant Movement International, in fact this blog post will be the extent of my engagement save when I pass the building when I am walking with my children to the park. I have to worry about the mobile police unit on my corner, how to pay for my own unfunded art space/home, and if a crime against a Latino family friend 20 years ago- an immigrant on immigrant crime if you will- well ever see justice.

Just as adventure tourism that claims to give a “border crossing experience” is problematic, so is an art project that claims to be movement.

By engaging the local community through public workshops, events, actions, and partnerships with immigrant and social service organizations, Immigrant Movement International will explore who is defined as an immigrant and the values they share, focusing on the larger question of what it means to be a citizen of the world. Bruguera will also delve into the implementation of art in society, examining what it means to create “Useful Art”, and addressing the disparity of engagement between informed audiences and the general public, as well as the historical gap between the language used in what is considered avant-garde and the language of urgent politics.

Since when is a funded art project coming into a neighborhood a movement?

When i became political as a teenager one of the first things I learned from my mentors was that you do not just roll up into a community and claim to be them and yet that is what it seems Ms. Bruguera is doing – actually worse- she’s not claiming she’s playing one of them . From the NYT :

But now she is sharing a tiny apartment in Corona, Queens, with five illegal immigrants and their six children, including a newborn, while scraping by on the minimum wage, without health insurance.

She has not fallen on hard times. Ms. Bruguera is performing a yearlong art piece meant to improve the image of immigrants and highlight their plight.

From my own tiny apartment in Corona, I am sure my vecinos and other immigrants are so grateful because you know if it weren’t for mujeres like her highlighting their plight, no one would know. Right?

Bruguera calls her art “useful” – as in it is supposed to have a bigger purpose. I suppose this is why the space, with it’s scrolling LED sign offers free legal consultations and encouraging words for the Mexican, Ecuadorian, and Dominican immigrants who make up the bulk of Corona’s population. The usefulness of art is about democratizing art, according to Bruguera, bringing it into people’s homes and solving problems, art as a tool.

According to the NYT it cost $85,000 to set up the space/studio/movement headquarters. The average monthly rent for a tiny ass apartment in Corona is just over $1,000. I wonder how useful Corona’s population will find/remember Bruguera when she and her “movement” leave?

She seeks to blend politics and art to empower immigrants through English classes, legal help and impromptu performances. She has held workshops to write slogans — like “I am today what your grandparents were yesterday” — that she plans to print on bumper stickers and T-shirts. And she intends to live like her working-class Latino neighbors; she has vowed not to tap her credit cards, personal bank account or assistants in Italy and Cuba.

Bruguera’s entering the home community of Corona, it’s complicated history of immigrant movement (pun intended) that has at times led to violence and death, already comes from a place of extreme privilege- she has those resources to fall back on when the funding for he playing poor project is done. It also assumes that there are no artists here already being useful : no painters, no musicians, no performers, no poets who challenge and engage the system not out of mere usefulness but as a means of survival and growth.

Tags: Art, Corona Queens, Immigrant Movement International, Tania Bruguera

20 Responses to Art or Exploitation : Living as an Immigrant in Corona, Queens

Karen

June 4th, 2011 at 8:25 pm

“This project flips that, where the immigrants become active participants.”

No, they’re the objects. Could you imagine a government agency or foundation awarding money to a poor brown immigrant to live as a wealthy person for one year for an “art” project? Of course not. But nobody sees a problem with giving this woman money to manipulate immigrants in the name of “art.” Of course she calls it “empowerment.”

Also, Bruguera is an immigrant herself. The difference between her and the people she’s now living with is that her bank account is full of grant money.

Mamita Mala

June 5th, 2011 at 7:50 am

The fact that she is an immigrant, a woman of color is what complicates things more for me. I think were her art based more on her own experience(s) as an immigrant, a world traveler, I would feel less judgemental. Plus one cannout deny the fact that immigration for Cubans coming to the United States is a very different experience compared to what the majority of the immigrants coming into Corona face.

Joseph Shahadi

June 5th, 2011 at 12:27 pm

As an artist and activist I am disturbed by the knee-jerk anti-art bias of so many activists, which rivals their conservative counteparts. Yes, there elements to this project that are disturbing–because the core issues it addresses are disturbing. Art can do things that activism(s) can’t– like making the institutionalized inequities immigrant communities face visible to a larger public by performing them. Does it make me uncomfortable that an artist has assumed these inequities by choice for the sake of an artwork? Yeah–but not as uncomfortable as the fact that countless people have no choice but to live with them and their struggles are largely met with apathy–if not outright derision. Your judgements of Bruguera’s project are valid, but largely beside the point, because you are not her audience. Activists and immigrants themselves are both painfully aware of their situation–but they (you) are not the focus for a piece like this, which is designed to reach people outside the community itself. You don’t have to appreciate her methods or agree with them but you cannot deny that they are successful. The fact that you read about this work in the New York Times proves that she has succeeded in bringing these issues forward in a way that activism alone can’t.

The Deportees Wife

June 5th, 2011 at 2:45 pm

Thank you very much for this post. As an artist and activist, this article for me was all kinds of wrong. I blogged about as well:
http://bit.ly/jeptoU

June 5th, 2011 at 3:20 pm

Mala, I doubt she considers herself an immigrant, and just because she’s from Cuba, it doesn’t make her a so-called woman of color. She is a priviledged white person, the kind of person whose actions are chronicled by the NY Times.

Joseph, I don’t think that this is getting attention because art is succeeding in a way that activism cannot. I think it has more to do with the fact that the artist comes from a privileged background. If the same kind of people were immigrants rights activists, we would read about them and the immigrants rights movement. It’s funny how they say that Latinos and the immigrants rights movement have no leaders, but somebody must have organized those marches that took place a few years ago.

It reminds me of an interview I saw with Peter Jennings about the Civil Rights Movement. He said that ABC did not station network reporters in the south to cover the movement until white college students began moving down there to register black people to vote. He said that they wanted to see if any of the white kids would get arrested.

I guess what bothers me is that people would rather pay more attention to a representation of immigrant lives performed by an elite white woman rather than to the immigrants themselves. Obviously this isn’t the artist’s fault. Years ago, college students used to recreate and live in the kind of shanties that were found in South Africa to teach Americans about the impact of apartheid. Most of us have never been to South Africa, so that makes sense. But this artist is recreating the lives of people who are easily accessible to everyone. What’s stopping somebody from asking an immigrant about his or her life? What’s stopping the NY Times or any media outlet from interviewing immigrants and asking them about themselves? Nothing.

I guess the project just underscores how invisible some people are. That’s probably why it bothers me.

June 5th, 2011 at 9:41 pm

@Karen Your comparison to the participation of white people in the civil rights movement is apt: like them, Bruguera is using the social advantages of her position to redirect the attention of the mainstream media, who are generally apathetic to the plight of immigrants as a matter of course. By all accounts she is doing it self-consciously–that is, not by pretending to be a poor immigrant herself but rather by making it clear that she is *not* and choosing to assume their challenges anyway. In this case her “privilege” can hardly be used against her to critique this work because the fact of it is what gives the piece its meaning.

Again, it seems like it is succeeding on its own terms. The discomfort that this work inspires has more to do with the dynamics it exposes than the tactics of the artist.

In any case the use of social privilege to refocus attention where it belongs is a legitimate tactic of protest. For example American and European Jews who use their “Right of Return” to agitate on behalf of Palestinians at Israeli checkpoints–something that would get their Arab counterparts killed–are an essential part of anti-Apartheid activism.

HamiltonTerrie18

June 6th, 2011 at 2:21 am

Every one remembers that life seems to be expensive, nevertheless some people require cash for various issues and not every man earns big sums cash. Hence to get quick personal loans and small business loan should be a right way out.

Maegan La Mala

June 6th, 2011 at 6:19 am

Joseph,

As a writer who is also a performance artist, I wonder where/how my critique would be seen as valid. I also am a member of this community and whether or not I am part of Bruguera’s intended audience or not, I wonder why my opinion, as a resident of Corona, perhaps not wanting people to come in and observe how I live, my vecinos live is not considered important or valid

June 6th, 2011 at 6:22 am

Thanks Deportee’s Wife. I just tweeted your post.

June 6th, 2011 at 11:09 am

@Maegan La Mala
I don’t really understand your question: I never said that your response wasn’t valid. Just the opposite, I said that it *was* more than once–and that I share your discomfort with this work. But I do think that your analysis of what Bruguera is doing is too simple, for two reasons:

1) Art and activism are not the same thing, even when they share the same goals. And art can do things that activism can’t.

2) In this case the thing that bothers you (and me, frankly) i.e. someone using her social position to enter a marginalized community and agitate on their behalf is also an effective activist tactic–as in Palestine.

I think what she is doing is complicated and interesting, even if it makes me uncomfortable. Maybe especially because it makes me uncomfortable. If you disagree, fine– it’s a big world and this is just a conversation. But if we are both allowed to have our own complicated reactions to Bruguera’s work why won’t you extend the same courtesy to the rest of the community in Corona? People aren’t stupid and if they feel like she is full of shit they will just ignore her, like you plan to. I trust people to decide for themselves. Don’t you?

June 6th, 2011 at 2:32 pm

Joseph, Hola and thank you for your comments. I don’t know if my questions were really directed at you for you to answer – just questions that were raised inside of me as a reaction to your comments.

Do you think there is a space where art and activism intersect or are they always distinct entities?

Personally – it’s why I embrace the term media maker – art is a medium as is writing as is a rally. So I cannot separate the two so easily.

I am also uncomfortable with some of the privilege being exercised by non-Palestinians in that struggle – which you reference.

Joseph are you from Corona? Have you read/heard any response from other people who live in Corona?

June 6th, 2011 at 3:12 pm

Re: “The discomfort that this work inspires has more to do with the dynamics it exposes than the tactics of the artist. ”

I agree. Now that I better understand the forces at work, I can see that this project is necessary. Mexicans and other Latino immigrants have basically been dehumanized, and if the only way the elite can “see” them is through a representation, then that’s a small step forward–for now.

I have to say though, the artist is Cuban, and Cubans have been playing this role for a while. The role of getting others to see Latinos through a Cuban filter. They created the bogus Latino category in the 1960s, and they run Spanish language TV and advertising. Even the author Alisa Valdes Rodriguez thinks she has a right to define all Latinos through her own Cuban experience. I’m so sick of it.

This project can be perceived in so many different ways…

June 7th, 2011 at 7:05 am

Not sure where the Alisa Valdez Rodriguez comment is coming from – but last night I was reflecting upon this more with some friends/artists/scholars and the more it reads/feels to me like the racist anthropology book, La Vida by Oscar Lewis- this too was supposed to humanize us – the us in this case being Puerto Ricans and all it did was reinforce and even invent new stereotypical theories about how we live and why.

I do agree though Karen, that this project can be perceived in so many different ways.

June 7th, 2011 at 9:38 pm

Hi Maegan, Looks like me earlier response didn’t post–if you get this twice, please feel free to delete one.

I know what you mean, this piece raises a lot of questions for me too. I do think that art and activism can intersect–like Act Up, Billionaires for Bush and Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping. And there are tons of examples of art that has politics in it, from Diego Rivera to Kara Walker. But I still think the are separate categories because activism has (or should have) ethical guidelines but art doesn’t. If Bruguera were inserting herself into the immigrant community in Corona as an activist I completely agree that it would be creepily unethical. But as an art project I think the same action makes the power dynamics visible, rather than obscuring them, which is the problem with racist anthropological or sociological studies that naturalize the objectification of marginalized peoples.

I don’t live in Corona, although I lived in Jamaica– I like Queens a lot. I’ve been in Brooklyn for years in an immigrant neighborhood in this borough. I haven’t heard anything from the immigrants of Corona about Bruguera’s project, although as a second generation American myself I’m very curious to know their reactions. If you published a follow up that included their thoughts I’d be eager to read it.

@Karen; I hadn’t thought about the inter-ethnic dynamic of having a Cuban represent a diverse Latin community. That’s a really good point.

June 8th, 2011 at 8:41 am

Good morning Joseph.
Sometimes comments get stuck in the spam filter and I have to “release” them so apologies for the delay.

No se – I think I am bothered by the notion that art doesn’t have the obligation to be ethical. I think I understand what you are saying but at it’s core it bothers me. Art for art’s sake? Seems very privileged.

Most of my neighbors have no idea that Bruguera’s project is supposed to be seen as art. Her storefront resembles the few orgs that are represented in the hood or nearby and/or resemble the storefronts of attorneys and hair salons. Perhaps that is part of the idea – to invite residents to look closer. Then what? That is always the question that remains for me. Then what?

June 9th, 2011 at 4:15 pm

Re: “Then what?”

Then nothing. They’re props. Her audience, as Joseph stated, are the people in power who would otherwise ignore this community (but who love art). LOL

The remedy for this isn’t to deride the artist, but to figure out a way for these immigrants to have a voice. Nobody else can really tell your story for you, so this project is really the artist’s story.

With Latinos I have noticed that there is a dearth of English language newspapers. Everything is always in Spanish. They need to learn how to tell their own stories in English to the wider community.

June 9th, 2011 at 9:18 pm

To talk about my vecinos as “these immigrants” is highly problematic for me. As is the idea that they don’t already have a voice. The fact that the assumption is that the burden must fall on people to prove the value of their lives strikes me as extremely privileged. Stories are told everyday. I hear them. They are not getting 10′s of thousands of dollars though to live in a tiny ass one bedroom apartment with a leaky ceiling and no hot water.

Who is the wider community? What is the story that gets told? Why English?

June 10th, 2011 at 2:13 am

I have noticed that lost of things strike you as privileged. Most people ARE privileged compared to poor immigrants.

I am not saying that the burden must fall on anybody to prove their worth, but if people don’t define themselves, then somebody else will do it for them, such as this artist and the foundation that is funding her project. Or Lou Dobbs.

Why English? Do I really have to answer this? Because we live in an English speaking country where the decisions are made in English, and if you want to influence these decison makers and everybody else, you have to communicate in English.

People around the world in China, India, the Middle East, etc are paying money to learn English so that they can become part of the global economy in some capacity other than cheap labor. Latinos should be doing the same thing. They should be enrolling their children in English immersion classes when they are three or four years old.

It’s nice that you hear these stories, but those stories need to be in books, newspapers, films, and on YouTube. And they need to be told in English.

Jay

June 13th, 2011 at 5:06 pm

Maegan you sum it up best with “Since when is a funded art project coming into a neighborhood a movement?” There is so much about it that is wrong headed, doesn’t it make your head hurt just thinking about it? The fact that she’s a WOC herself does not make this poaching project any less wrong. Maybe she’ll get it before her year is up.

This project also undermines a long tradition of art as agency and art as resistance in various oppressed communities in much of recorded history.

June 14th, 2011 at 8:59 am

Hola Jay and thanks for commenting. Yeah, in fact for me, her being Cuban makes it more problematic – mmm well differently problematic I guess.

But yes! I really agree with that this undermines work that has been done and continues to be done using art as agency and resistance.
I think that’s what really bothers me about this “useful” labeling

Karen: I don't want to be mean, but this can't go on. They are putting all of our rights at risk. If you wa [...]

Maegan La Mala: Thank you! [...]

Maegan La Mala: Gracias. Did you watch and what did you think? [...]

whatsername: Sending good thoughts your way. Lots of love! [...]

Rosa: Nice article, I will watch the funeral tonight. [...]

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Art or Exploitation : Living as an Immigrant in Corona, Queens

20 Responses to Art or Exploitation : Living as an Immigrant in Corona, Queens

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