PULLMAN, Wash. — Coco Fusco, internationally renowned performance artist and cultural theorist, will visit Washington State University as the Jo Hockenhull Lecturer for Women’s Studies.
Fusco will do a new solo performance/installation called “Votos” from 5:15-6:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 5, in the lobby of the Fine Arts Building. Her performance will be the closing event of the College of Liberal Arts Conference “Liberal Arts in the New Millienium.”
Using video, film, music, installations and performance, Fusco’s creations are funny, challenging, disturbing and memorable. Her work touches on issues of race, gender, immigration, sexuality, food, historical narrative, the politics of representation and the complexity of cultural identities. Her multidisciplinary performances have been shown at the Walker Museum in Minneapolis, the London Institute for Contemporary Art, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and other venues around the world.
According to Noel Sturgeon, director of the Department of Women’s Studies, Fusco’s WSU performance will be of a relatively new work, and “will be a unique, exciting and interesting experience. Those who attend will be sure to find it memorable.”
Fusco has held residencies in numerous institutions, including the California Institute for the Arts; the Kun Kun Cultural Center in Chiapas, Mexico; and the University of Colorado, Boulder. She has received grants from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Mellon Foundation, the New York State Council for the Arts and other arts funding agencies.
She has lectured widely, including at the Whitney Museum, Harvard University, the Dia Center for the Arts and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She has curated numerous art, video and film exhibitions by Latino/a, African-American, Cuban, Chilean and Arab artists. Fusco has written on art, multicultural literacy, migration and cultural identity for The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Village Voice, Art in America, The Nation, Cineaste, Ms. Magazine, Latina Magazine, Black Film Review and many other publications. Her essays in cultural theory have appeared in numerous anthologies.
Fusco’s book, “English is Broken Here: Notes on Cultural Fusion in the Americas,” won the 1995 Critics’ Choice Award from the American Educational Studies Association.
The Jo Hockenhull Lecture for Women’s Studies was launched in 1996, to honor Hockenhull, who was the director of Women’s Studies for more than 10 years. Hockenhull is also an artist, an activist and a supporter of women artists, particularly women artists of color and women artists from the Third World.
Fusco’s visit is sponsored by the Department of Women’s Studies, the College of Liberal Arts and several of its other departments, the Office of the Provost and Academic Vice President, Human Relations and Resources, Activities and Recreational Sports, VPLAC, the Social and Economic Sciences Research Center, the Department of Rural Sociology and the University Honors College.
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