El Museo del Barrio has extended Coco Fusco: Tomorrow, I Will Become an Island through March 1, 2026,

 

Coco Fusco 

A Room of One's Own: Women and Power in the New America, 2006-2008 

Performance documentation 

Courtesy of the artist and Mendes Wood DM 

El Museo del Barrio has extended Coco Fusco: Tomorrow, I Will Become an Island through March 1, 2026, following strong critical and public response. Originally slated to close on January 11, the exhibition has drawn sustained attention for its urgent examination of politics and power through the work of Coco Fusco, the Cuban-American interdisciplinary artist and writer (b. 1960, based in New York).

Marking the artist’s first U.S. survey, the exhibition spans more than thirty years of Fusco’s practice and includes over twenty works in video, performance, installation, photography, and writing. A new photographic series debuts as part of the presentation.

The exhibition is organized by Susanna V. Temkin, interim chief curator, and Rodrigo Moura, former chief curator, with support from Lee Sessions and Maria Molano Parrado.

“The continued momentum around Tomorrow, I Will Become an Island shows how deeply audiences are engaging with Coco Fusco’s politically grounded practice,” Temkin said. “By extending the exhibition, we hope more visitors—whether first-timers or those returning—will have space to reflect on the questions her work raises about the world we inhabit.”

Organized thematically, the show traces the core subjects that have shaped Fusco’s career: immigration, surveillance and military power, post-revolutionary Cuban history, and the ongoing legacies of colonialism. Highlights include:

Immigration Narratives: Works probing public perceptions of immigrants in the United States and Europe, including Everyone Here is a New Yorker (2025), a new photographic suite extending from Fusco’s 2024 public art video animation commissioned by More Art, Inc.

Intercultural Misunderstandings: A gallery dedicated to projects created in response to the 500th anniversary of the so-called “discovery” of the Americas, featuring a reproduction of Fusco’s landmark Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West (1992/2025), originally performed with Guillermo Gómez-Peña.

Interrogation Tactics: Video, photographs, and performance documentation examining military strategies, surveillance technologies, and the exploitation of female sexuality during the War on Terror.

Poetry and Power: A focused selection of videos that consider the history of artists challenging the Cuban government—an enduring theme throughout Fusco’s work.

Collectively, the exhibition offers a wide view of Fusco’s multidisciplinary approach and its ongoing relevance to contemporary political and cultural discourse.

Exhibition design is by Solomonoff Architecture Studio/SAS, with graphic design by estúdio gráfico.

About the Artist

Coco Fusco is an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in New York. Her honors include the 2023 Free Speech Defender Award from the National Coalition Against Censorship; a 2021 American Academy of Arts and Letters Art Award; a 2021 Latinx Artist Fellowship; a 2021 Anonymous Was a Woman award; the 2018 Rabkin Prize for Art Criticism; the 2016 Greenfield Prize; the 2014 Cintas Fellowship; a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship; the 2013 Absolut Art Writing Award; a 2013 Fulbright Fellowship; the 2012 US Artists Fellowship; and the 2003 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts.

Her performance and video work has appeared at the 56th Venice Biennale; the Sharjah Biennial; Frieze Special Projects; Basel Unlimited; three Whitney Biennials (2022, 2008, 1993); and numerous international exhibitions. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Walker Art Center, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum, the Centre Pompidou, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona.

Fusco is the author of multiple books and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and other art publications. Her monograph Tomorrow, I Will Become an Island was published by Thames & Hudson in 2023.

She holds a B.A. in Semiotics from Brown University (1982), an M.A. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University (1985), and a Ph.D. in Art and Visual Culture from Middlesex University (2007). She is a professor at the Cooper Union School of Art.

About El Museo del Barrio

El Museo del Barrio is the nation’s leading Latinx and Latin American cultural institution. It welcomes visitors of all backgrounds to explore the artistic histories of these communities through its Permanent Collection, exhibitions, bilingual public programs, educational initiatives, festivals, publications, and special events. The Museum is located at 1230 Fifth Avenue at 104th Street in New York City.

 Facebook, Instagram, and X. For more information, please visit www.elmuseo.org.