THE contemporary

Art and politics
Major artistic events are not the only career boosters
on the art market: some media attention and subsequent
price increases are triggered by an artist’s political
activism. This past year, Ai Weiwei was not the
only artist to recover his passport and immediately
set a new auction record; the same sequence happened
to Cuban artist Tania Bruguera.
Tania Bruguera
Relatively new to the auction market, Cuban
artist Tania Bruguera (b. 1968) focuses on performance
and video art. Her work was noticed at various
international exhibitions including the Venice
Biennale in 2001 and 2005 and the 2002 Kassel
documenta. More recently, news of a different
order has motivated the art world: a few days
after the announcement of an easing of diplomatic
relations between the US and Cuba (17 December
2014), Tania Bruguera organized a performance
in Havana which strongly irritated the Cuban authorities...
The confiscation of her passport and her
arrest precipitated a wave of indignation in the art
world and the market itself responded, choosing a
very symbolic work to set her new record: in May
2015 Phillips sold her Destierro 1 sculpture, evoking
the problem of a split between politics and free ar-
1) Destierro (Displacement), Phillips New York, 26 May 2015.
tistic expression, i.e. precisely the problem she had
been a victim of. From a low estimate of $40,000,
the bidding rose to $81,250, in spite of her unremarkable
auction history. In so doing, the market
has altered her career path and declared its support.
Bruguera, who recovered her passport on 10
July 2015, joined the permanent collections of the
New York MoMA this year 2 .
Pascale Marthine Tayou
This self-taught artist born in Cameroon in 1967
has been widely publicized for better and for worse.
He began the year with an auction record in London
for two Poupées Pascale (evoking African ritual
sculptures) that fetched $41,500 3 . He received an
enthusiastic welcome at the 46th edition of Art Basel
(June 17-21), participated in the inauguration of
the Paris gallery VNH (Gri-Gri, April 25 - June 20)
and showed his work at the Brussels Bozar (Boomerang,
September 24-June 20), and is programmed
for the forthcoming reopening of the Paris Museum
2) With an untitled video-performance installation that was
of course politically loaded.
3) Sotheby’s London, 11 March 2015. The same Poupées had
just been part of an exhibition that Pascale Marthine Tayou
created to echo objects in Lyon’s African Museum (Fast
& slow, 17 September 2014 - 15 February 2015).
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