NEW YORK, NY.- In response to overwhelming critical acclaim, El Museo del Barrio will extend Coco Fusco: Tomorrow, I Will Become an Island through March 1, 2026. Originally scheduled to close on January 11, 2026, the exhibition has captivated audiences and critics alike with its timely exploration of politics and power through the groundbreaking work of Cuban-American interdisciplinary artist and writer Coco Fusco (b. 1960, lives in New York).
Spanning more than three decades of Fuscos career, Tomorrow, I Will Become an Island is the artists first U.S. survey, featuring more than twenty works across video, performance, installation, photography, and writingincluding a new photographic series debuting at El Museo del Barrio.
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 ongoing success of Tomorrow, I Will Become an Island, suggests that audiences are eager for Coco Fuscos political and engaged artistic practice, says Temkin. By extending the show, we hope more audiences will have the opportunity to visitor make a return visit, and that the extra time affords active reflection on the part of the viewer about the world we live in.
Organized thematically, the exhibition explores central concerns that Fusco has addressed across her practice, including immigration, military power and surveillance, post-revolutionary Cuban history, and the lasting legacies of colonialism. The presentation offers an expansive view of her multidisciplinary approach through key bodies of work, including:
Immigration Narratives: Works addressing the perception of immigrants in the US and Europe, including Everyone Here is a New Yorker (2025), a new photographic suite that extends from Fusco's 2024 public art video animation commission by More Art, Inc.
Intercultural Misunderstandings: A room dedicated to Fuscos projects, created in counterpoint to the 500th anniversary of the so-called discovery of the Americas, including a reproduction of her iconic Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West (1992/2025), originally performed in collaboration with Guillermo Gómez-Peña.
Interrogation Tactics: Video, photographs, and performance documentation that consider military tactics, surveillance technologies, and the exploitation of female sexuality in the War on Terror.
Poetry and Power: A focused selection of video, featuring several works that reflect on the history of artists challenges to the Cuban governmenta central subject in Fuscos oeuvre. Together, this selection illuminates the breadth and depth of Fuscos artistic visionone that remains acutely relevant in todays national political and cultural climate.
Coco Fusco is an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in New York. She is a recipient of a 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, a 2018 Rabkin Prize for Art Criticism, a 2016 Greenfield Prize, a 2014 Cintas Fellowship, a 2013 Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2013 Absolut Art Writing Award, a 2013 Fulbright Fellowship, a 2012 US Artists Fellowship and a 2003 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts.
Fusco's performances and videos have been presented at the 56th Venice Biennale, the Sharjah Biennale, Frieze Special Projects, Basel Unlimited, three Whitney Biennials (2022, 2008, and 1993), and several other international exhibitions. Her works are 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 numerous books, and she contributes regularly to The New York Review of Books and numerous art publications. Her monograph publication Tomorrow, I will Become an Island was published by Thames & Hudson in 2023.
Fusco received her B.A. in Semiotics from Brown University (1982), her M.A. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University (1985), and her Ph.D. in Art and Visual Culture from Middlesex University (2007). She is a Professor at the Cooper Union School of Art.