Cuban artist and activist Tania Bruguera was detained by Cuban police on Sunday 24 May in her Havana home after finishing a 100 hour-long public reading of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), Hyperallergic reports. The reading started on 22 May, to coincide with the opening Havana Biennial, and took place at the artist’s house, where figures from the artworld came to show support by attending the performance, including art historian Judith Rodenbeck and Guggenheim UBS MAP Latin America Curator, Pablo Leon de la Barra.
Shortly after the end of the reading, Bruguera was led away by police officers and reportedly detained, before returning home a few hours later. These events follow an earlier arrest of the artist in December 2014, when she was detained and had her passport confiscated after she planned to stage a performance about free speech in Havana’s Revolution Square.
Bruguera is one of 163 activists and journalists who have been arrested over the weekend, Pan Am Post reports; the majority were members of dissident groups who were protesting to demand the release of jailed Cuban dissidents and Venezuelan political prisoners.
26 May 2015
