Tania Bruguera, Immigrant Movement International, 2010–

Very rarely within cities is diversity a truly equal distribution of backgrounds. More often, diversity is present in concentrated pockets of immigrants from more homogenous cultures. This is true in Corona, Queens, a neighborhood within a borough of New York City that is densely populated with immigrants of predominantly Hispanic as well as Asian backgrounds. The Cuban artist Tania Bruguera chose Corona as the headquarters of an ongoing social art project called Immigrant Movement International (IMI). IMI seeks to provide visibility for the presence, needs, and desires of the immigrant community of Corona, through legal and health services, academic engagement, marketable skills, and art. The project is funded through established art institutions such as the Queens Museum and Creative Time, a non-profit organization dedicated to socially engaged art. Bruguera’s work is dynamic, evolving according to the needs of those it serves, and democratic in its goals of giving voice to the unheard by coopting systems of power such as the justice system. Bruguera also utilizes notions of community building and commoning by creating community centers to generate strength in numbers, and through this, access to the public sphere.

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