From the National People to the Ordinary Passersby: Forms of Anonymity in Contemporary Cuban Art

Abstract: In 2014, Cuban artist Tania Bruguera attempted to stage a performance at the Plaza de la Revolución in which passersby would walk up to a microphone and speak their mind. Unlike the "national people" at the square, this crowd had no leader. What kind of politics does Brugera's reconfiguration of anonymity, from "people" to "passersby," reveal? This article examines how such imagined structures of anonymity signal different communal identities and, importantly, expand the repertoire of collective action. As I trace a genealogy of representations of anonymous crowds in Cuban art, from the early days of the Revolution up to contemporary artists, I argue that just as background crowds and secondary characters can configure possible narrative plots, artistic interventions and representations of "the many" deploy anonymity to reveal the nature of agency within the artistic text and political agency outside of it.