Tania Bruguera (b. 1968), one of the best-known performance artists in Cuba and in global performance circuits, emerged at this time of transition. Bruguera studied Mendieta’s works to reembody those performances in her early pieces (Tribute to Ana Mendieta). By bringing Mendieta back to Cuba’s cultural memory in ritualistic pieces, she sought to reverse the erasure of previous generations.

She slowly moved from focusing on the personal to engaging the full social body. In 2003 she founded the Cátedra Arte de Conducta (Art of Behavior Department), hosted by the Instituto Superior de Arte, an interdisciplinary program for explorations on the social and political nature of performance art. The work at the Arte de Conducta focuses on the study of behavior as the result of social structures in daily life. As many transnational artists in the first decade of the 21st century who work at different locations, Bruguera has been dividing her time between Chicago and Havana. In Bruguera’s work, the audience members often find themselves occupying the role of co-creator of the piece, thus questioning notions of authorship and defying authority (see The Trust Workshop). As Bruguera has explained, she takes advantage of the privileged role an artist has in society to create a space in which freedom and tolerance may be negotiated. Perhaps the best example of this is the performance Susurro de Tatlin at the 10th Havana Biennal.