On Monday, April 13, from 12:30-2PM, the Dallas Arts District Museums will collectively re-stage the controversial Cuban artist Tania Bruguera’s participatory artwork, Tatlin’s Whisper #6, which allows members of the general public to come forward and speak freely for one minute about aspirations or politics. The event will be staged in front of the Nasher Sculpture Center.
In support of artist’s freedom of expression, the Crow Collection, Dallas Museum of Art and Nasher Sculpture Center join in solidarity with museums across the country in protesting Bruguera’s potential incarceration by Cuban government.
Bruguera was arrested last December when she attempted to stage the performance in her native Cuba, and has now been branded a “counter revolutionary’ by the Cuban government. She faces sentencing of at least three years in prison. After a call to action by Creative Time director Anne Pasternak to join in support of Bruguera and other artists around the world who face criminal charges and violence for exercising their basic human right to free expression, museums across the country will be re-staging the performative piece. MoMA, the New Museum, the Queens Museum, and the Hammer Museum are among the participating institutions, and Creative Time will re-stage the work in Times Square’s Duffy Square.
“Be a part of the event,” says Anne Pasternak, “by simply agreeing to speak for up to one minute on a soap box about your hopes and dreams for the future.”
As article 19 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights states, everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.