Tania Bruguera: The Condition of No

The Condition of No—about the project
Cuban artist and activist Tania Bruguera (b. 1968 in Havana, Cuba) has conceived a project about censorship titled The Condition of No especially for the temporary home of the Museum Villa Stuck.

Shaped by personal experiences of censorship and abuse of power in Cuba and other places, Bruguera uses art to initiate social and political change. Through her performances and exhibitions at the intersection of art and politics, she has become an international advocate for free speech and against censorship.

In 2022, she presented the INSTAR collective (Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt) she had founded in 2015 at documenta fifteen in Kassel. The aim of the collective is to build a better and more peaceful Cuba in which human rights are respected and people can express their opinions freely.

In February 2024, Tania Bruguera presented her performance Where Your Ideas Become Civic Actions (100 Hours Reading “The Origins of Totalitarianism”) at Hamburger Bahnhof—Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart in Berlin. The reading of Hannah Arendt's book was disrupted by protesters. It was stopped the following morning.

Bruguera views developments in the German cultural scene with concern, citing as reasons the inability to discuss cases of anti-Semitism at documenta fifteen; the disinvitations of artists and writers based on the anti-BDS law; the calls to boycott German cultural institutions under the label “Strike Germany,” and the recent debate about an anti-discrimination clause for arts funding in Berlin.

As Tania Bruguera writes: “Even though the circumstances, culture and history are different, I have felt things in Germany that I recognize from previous experiences of surveillance and intolerance. I have witnessed collective fear and silencing, followed by punitive measures and cancellations. When I conceived the public program of The Condition of No, there was not much public discussion in Germany about these sensitive issues. I began to wonder how collective processing would impact the future.”

Tania Bruguera has taken the current situation as an opportunity to create a diverse program examining the issue of censorship from different angles.

The Condition of No is a three-part program:

An exhibition based on the experiences of the Cuban INSTAR collective looks at the mechanisms of propaganda, censorship, and protest, while a series of talks on The Condition of No draws attention to the situation in Germany, discussing examples of boycotts, censorship, and protests. The third part, the INSTAR Film Festival, focuses on Chinese films that have been censored or banned.

The Condition of No seeks to facilitate understanding, differentiation and communication in what is currently a precarious situation. Tania Bruguera has been campaigning for free speech and against censorship in Cuba for decades. Her view of the situation in Germany is shaped by the experience of another culture. This offers an opportunity to rethink familiar points of view and recognize fresh possibilities. More than anything, it is about creating a fear-free space in which people can talk.

Conceived by Tania Bruguera for INSTAR / Curated by Roland Wenninger, Museum Villa Stuck / A project of the Museum Villa Stuck in cooperation with INSTAR at VS—the temporary home of the Museum Villa Stuck, Goethestraße 54, 80336 Munich. Contact: villastuck@muenchen.de.