Balancing unflinching critique with poetic precision, Coco Fusco’s ‘I Learned to Swim on Dry Land’ at MACBA, Spain, traces the intersections of art, politics, and resistance—where performance becomes protest, and storytelling becomes a tool of liberation.
Installation view of ‘I Learned to Swim on Dry Land’ at MACBA. Photo: Roberto Ruiz
For more than three decades, Coco Fusco has navigated the fraught terrain between visibility and power, dissecting the colonial legacies embedded in art, politics, and everyday life. Her performances and films challenge how bodies are read and represented, drawing attention to the systems that continue to define—and confine—difference. In ‘I Learned to Swim on Dry Land’, Fusco turns her lens toward Cuba, the United States, and the transnational histories that bind them, reminding us that resistance is as much an act of seeing as it is of speaking.
ART AFRICA: Your recent works, such as The Eternal Night and Aponte’s Lost Podcast, draw on testimony and archival absence. How do you approach the challenge of giving voice to what has been silenced or destroyed?
Coco Fusco: First of all, many, if not most, artists create works based on stories from real life, stories we borrow from others. Not everyone admits that. I make a point of acknowledging the collaborations. I have other works in the show that involved interviewing others to get their stories. For example, Dolores from 10 to 10, the simulated CCTV video installation, is based on the true story of Delfina Rodriguez, a maquiladora worker in Tijuana.
The author of Aponte’s Lost Podcast is Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, not me. I helped to coordinate the participation of the other artists who created drawings based on his instructions. I recorded Luis’ statements during his phone calls from prison. I am a facilitator, not an author.
All the videos about Cuban poets – The Confession, The Message in a Bottle from María Elena, To Live in June with Your Tongue Hanging Out, and The Eternal Night – are based on true stories. I interviewed María Elena Cruz Varela and Néstor Díaz de Villegas – they are still alive. I worked with Heberto Padilla’s and Reinaldo Arenas’ autobiographies and other texts – they are dead. 
Installation view of ‘I Learned to Swim on Dry Land’ at MACBA. Photo: Roberto Ruiz
From The Couple in the Cage to The Empty Plaza, your art often stages public spaces as sites of memory and confrontation. What role do you think symbolic spaces—whether a square, a prison, or an island—play in shaping collective imagination?
Not all the performances in The Couple in the Cage take place in public spaces. When Gómez-Peña and I were seeking places to perform, we wanted locations that were tied to the history of the ethnographic display. Those included Columbus Plaza in Madrid and Covent Garden in London. We also performed in natural history museums in Washington, DC, Chicago, and Sydney, Australia, because those institutions had participated in the practice of the ethnographic display. I decided to make a video in the Plaza of the Revolution for a slightly different reason. 2011 was the year of the Arab Spring, in which citizens of many countries in the Arab World filled central public plazas to protest their governments and demand change. Cubans watching these events began to speculate as to when the Plaza of the Revolution would fill up with people demanding change. The Plaza of the Revolution is a symbolically loaded site in Cuba. It was the leading site for revolutionary political theatre, where Fidel Castro would speak to giant crowds and dramatise the supposed support of the people for his dictates. These days, the plaza is empty most of the time. Occasionally, dignitaries are brought there, and tourist buses park to let tourists take pictures of Che Guevara’s silhouette on one of the ministry facades. In general, Cubans avoid the plaza. I wanted to consider the meaning of that emptiness. 
Installation view of ‘I Learned to Swim on Dry Land’ at MACBA. Photo: Roberto Ruiz
Language, censorship, and silence recur in your projects on Cuban poets like Heberto Padilla and Reinaldo Arenas. What does working with the written word add to your visual and performative practice?
I am a writer. I work with the written word all the time in my work as a videomaker and performance artist. Many of my performances are delivered as lectures. The Autores Firmantes installation at MACBA focuses on writers, their words of support for Padilla, and the words used by the Cuban government to suppress the literary works of those writers. The Els Segadors video in the NYC show, but not the MACBA show, explores the meaning of the Catalan anthem’s lyrics as interpreted by many different people. The written word is integral to my practice.
In works like Bare Life Study #1 and Operation Atropos, you’ve addressed systems of surveillance, interrogation, and power. How has your understanding of state violence shifted over time, particularly in relation to Cuba and the United States?
I don’t think my perspective or interest has shifted over time. I just feel that I choose to explore those ideas through different subjects.
Installation view of ‘I Learned to Swim on Dry Land’ at MACBA. Photo: Roberto Ruiz
Collaboration has been central to your practice, from Guillermo Gómez-Peña to Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. What does collaboration allow you to achieve that you couldn’t in a solitary practice?
When artists create stories, they often borrow them from real people and then embellish or mask the source. I don’t. I like to work with others. I learn from collaborations. Also, Elvira Dyangani was interested in the collaborative dimension of my practice, and she highlighted this in her curatorial selections.
Looking back, do you see continuity between your early performances critiquing exoticism and your current projects on prison, censorship, and dissent? Or do you feel your work has entered a new phase?
Exoticisation is just one form of “othering”, of treating human beings as different or inferior or undesirable based on a presumption of a physical, linguistic or cultural difference. I don’t think I am in a new phase. I believe my explorations continue. My next project will return to the history of the ethnographic display.
‘I Learned to Swim on Dry Land’ runs at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Spain, until 11 January 2026.
