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Couple in The Cage: Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West


  • 1992-1993 performance art piece by artists Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco for their exhibition which toured four countries and was performing in eight different locations.

  • First performed in honor of the quincentenary anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival to the Americas, the work sought to make visible the history of abuse, captivity and exploitation of indigenous peoples.

  • Their inspiration drew heavily upon the history of othering, the human zoo

  • Criticism for varied upon the location of the presentation, though what alarmed the artists most was the substantial public belief that their performances were reality and the substantial number of critics who critiqued their work as unethical due to its misrepresentation, rather than to fully discuss its cultural and institutional critique.

  • Connect to human zoo in essay

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Couple_in_The_Cage:_Two_Undiscovered_Amerindians_Visit_the_West

  • For two years, they travelled through various Western metropolises, presenting themselves as undiscovered Amerindians from an island in the Gulf of Mexico that had somehow been overlooked for five centuries. They called their homeland Guatinau and themselves Guatinauis.

  • Exhibited in a cage, the couple performed “traditional tasks,” which ranged from sewing voodoo dolls to watching television. A donation box in front of the cage indicated that for a small fee, the female Guatinaui would perform a traditional dance (to rap music), the male Guatinaui would tell authentic Amerindian stories (in a made-up language), and they would both pose with visitors. At the Whitney Museum in New York, sex was added to the spectacle when visitors were offered a peek at “authentic Guatinaui male genitals” for five dollars.

  • There is a mix of old and modern actions

  • everything on display was blatantly theatrical and clichéed: the Guatinauis had their skulls measured, were fed bananas, and were described as “specimens,” among other things.

  • Despite their intent to create an over-the-top satirical commentary on Western concepts of the exotic, primitive Other, it turned out that a substantial portion of the audience believed in the authenticity of the Guatinauis.

  • the documentary presents the audience’s reactions as indirect proof that racist beliefs — non-Western people are primitive, inferior, and essentially different from Western people — permeate our postcolonial society. Whether or not this is true, The Couple in the Cage persuasively argues that colonial ideas continue to influence our approach to non-Western cultures.

  • http://beautifultrouble.org/case/the-couple-in-the-cage/

  • https://vimeo.com/79363320

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