Spectator as Witness: Trauma and Testimonio in Contemporary Cuban Art

Abstract

The current scholarship on testimonio largely focusses on its application in literature, failing to address the genre’s possibilities beyond written and spoken narratives. However, voices that exist outside of the literary realm have employed testimonio-driven strategies to produce witness accounts of events and experiences that were previously ignored by or erased from the collective consciousness. Broadening the genre’s scope, this article examines visual manifestations of testimonio in contemporary Cuban and diasporic art, focusing on works by Coco Fusco, Felix González-Torres, and Ana Mendieta that speak to personal and collective experiences of trauma. Experiences associated with exile, displacement, and erasure are particularly relevant to this article, as the artists in focus identify as dissident, immigrant, Latinx, queer, woman, and/or Other. Given the growing interest in accessible approaches to reworking trauma, this article contributes towards the current scholarship on nuanced understandings of healing, ultimately participating in uncovering the complexities of living through and with trauma. The works discussed offer critical reflections related to the AIDS crisis, colonization, and violence against female and Latinx bodies, which have produced personal, collective, and generational traumas that are rarely acknowledged by Western societies. Therefore, by employing a framework centered on testimonio, this article reveals possibilities for marginalized and minoritized spectators to partake in the reworking of trauma through witnessing, while also illuminating, the limitations of art’s healing capabilities for victims.

1. Ways of Remembering

Remembering is never a quiet act of introspection.

It is a painful re-membering, a putting together of the dismembered past to make

sense of the trauma of the present (Bhabha 1994, p. 63).

Homi K. Bhabha

Remembering is a form of witnessing. The act itself allows us to replay moments from the past, sometimes to the point of feeling as though we are reliving them. It can take place collectively, but it can also occur in isolation, as is often the case when remembering traumatic experiences, given that trauma, for many, “exists in the realm of the unspeakable”, as expressed by Jill Bennett (Bennett 2005, p. 49). Its remembrance, even when uttered aloud, includes silent moments that occur between initial thoughts and the words that follow, such as the period of silence that trails behind a therapist’s question before the patient responds with a less-than-honest answer. Many survivors, however, desire and search for ways of breaking the cycle of silence that surrounds trauma, a cycle that is perpetually, even if subconsciously, impairing lived experiences through the concealment brought on by guilt and shame (Hammers 2019, p. 494). Tactics range from conventional approaches, such as talk therapy, to more alternative ones, including embodied forms of reworking traumatic experiences.

In order to consider alternative and potentially more universal forms of engaging with trauma that center the experiences of marginalized and minoritized populations, this article examines visual manifestations of testimonio in contemporary Cuban and diasporic art, with particular focus on key works by Coco Fusco, Félix González-Torres, and Ana Mendieta that speak to personal and collective experiences of trauma. The works represent personal and collective traumas related to sexual violence, sexual discrimination, and stereotypical views of minorities of color rooted in colonial stereotypes from a range of perspectives, given Fusco’s lived experiences as an Afro-Latinx woman living and working in the United States, González-Torres’ AIDS diagnosis as a queer Latinx man at the height of the AIDS crisis, and Mendieta’s experience of having been moved from Cuba to the United States as a child amidst the racial climate of the Civil Rights Movement. Thus, through the use of testimonio, the artists in focus draw on their own experiences as a means of exposing traumatic histories that have rarely been told in public realms. Testimonio, often viewed as a literary genre, is a strategy in which an individual acts as witness or protagonist for others who have experienced similar situations but were unable to give proper expression to them (Lewis-Beck et al. 2004). Therefore, testimonio allows visual artists to create deeply personal works centered on their own experiences with trauma that have the capacity to resonate with a wide audience, often through the use of universalizing approaches such as the concealment of identifying markers that would otherwise suggest that the work belongs to a specific person, group, or location. Thus, testimonio provides a framework through which artists can metonymically represent individuals who have experienced similar traumas but who have not had their realities told in an authentic manner, leading to the creation of works that seek to “give voice to the voiceless” (Breen 2012, p. 53). Through this lens, this article considers works by Fusco, González-Torres, and Mendieta as case studies that illuminate the ways in which visual artists appropriate testimonio as a strategy for speaking to and engaging with trauma, ultimately allowing spectators to similarly bear witness to traumas that were previously ignored by or erased from the collective consciousness. While the works examined have been considered by other scholars, the framework employed offers nuanced ways of thinking about and engaging with art as it relates to traumatic experiences, revealing the role that witnessing plays in ongoing processes of healing. This article explores the use of trauma-centered visual art as a tool for victims of trauma with the capacity to serve as a supplement to traditional and experimental strategies, including talk therapy and rape play. Traumatic experiences associated with exile, displacement, and erasure are particularly relevant, given the marginalized positions of the artists in focus, who identify as dissident, immigrant, Latinx, queer, woman, and/or Other. Therefore, I argue that it is through the reenactment of their own experiences, as well as the experiences of others who have lived through similar traumas, that the artists discussed have produced alternative ways of remembering and reworking trauma that broaden possibilities for personal and collective restoration.

2. Performing Trauma

In April of 1973, upon receiving an invitation from Mendieta to visit her off-campus apartment on Moffitt Street, fellow University of Iowa students and friends of the artist arrived at the designated hour to find her front door ajar. Upon entering the dark space, they encountered Mendieta bent over and tied to a table, with her trousers and undergarments pulled down to her ankles so as to reveal her semi-nude body covered in blood. The shocking scenario was reminiscent of a post-rape scene, a connection Mendieta’s mostly male visitors would have made due to the rape and murder of University of Iowa student Sarah Ottens less than a month prior. They also would have accurately assumed that the scene was staged, as Mendieta had been experimenting with performative practices throughout her studies at the university. This performative act, titled Rape Scene, was presented in direct response to the violence that took place on the artist’s campus. As stated by Mendieta, her works were often centered on “a personal response to a situation”, cementing Rape Scene’s basis in reality (Mendieta et al. 1996, pp. 36–38, 90, 92). Therefore, while Rape Scene was inspired by Ottens’ tragic rape and murder, Mendieta’s performative act offers a slightly altered narrative, in which the violated body becomes that of a Latinx woman, utilizing testimonio-driven strategies, such as the concealment of identifying markers, to expose ongoing acts of violence against minoritized and marginalized women. Mendieta’s experience as a Cuban exile growing up in the United States in the 1960s, a period characterized by its intense racial climate, certainly influenced the racial undertone present in this work. As a high school student, Mendieta’s peers told her, “Go back to Cuba, you whore”, a testament to the hyper-sexualization of women of color across Western societies referenced in Rape Scene (Blocker 1994, p. 16). Furthering this point, the artist noted that Rape Scene must be understood “as a reaction against the idea of violence against women” (Viso and Mendieta 2004, pp. 152, 155, 160). Leticia Alvarado expands upon the work’s reference to violence against the female body, arguing that it must also be read as a “racially coded scene cued by the bondage of her wrist with rope, echoing a lashing or lynch scene” (Alvarado 2015, p. 79). Such racially charged imagery, Alvarado explains, can be seen as inviting Ken Gonzales-Day’s theorization of the “wonder gaze”, which he defines as “the notion of the spectacle or of the scopic pleasure audiences found in looking at or reading about” lynching (Gonzales-Day 2006, p. 182).

Various contemporary Cuban and diasporic artists have reappropriated sexualizing and racializing motifs that invite both the male gaze and the wonder gaze, in many instances exaggerating such motifs in order to expose and critique problematic sociopolitical structures present in modern-day society, often through the use of irony or shock value. For Mendieta, drawing on such motifs was particularly critical due to her own experiences as a Latinx woman in the United States. Born in Havana, Cuba, in 1948, Mendieta and her sister Raquel were sent to Miami through Operación Pedro Pan in 1960, when the artist was just twelve years old (Conde 1999). The sisters were relocated to Iowa, where they moved between orphanages and foster homes until they were reunited with their mother and younger brother in 1966 and subsequently with their father in 1979; the Mendieta family then settled in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (Cabañas 1999, p. 12). There, Mendieta enrolled at the University of Iowa where she graduated with a B.A. in art in 1969 and an M.A. in painting in 1972. She later entered the University of Iowa’s more experimental M.F.A. program, where she was exposed to a diverse range of media, including photography, video, performance, and installation art (Cabañas 1999, p. 12). Mendieta’s experiences as a Cuban exile in the Midwest during the Civil Rights Movement, as well as her exposure to experimental modes of art while completing her M.F.A., had a significant impact on her career (Roulet 2004). Addressing notions of displacement and identity, she often used her feelings of Otherness as primary source material.

Through Rape Scene, Mendieta was attempting to make visible the realities of women who have experienced sexual violence. By inviting spectators to confront what looked like the aftermath of a woman having been raped, the artist staged a scene in which spectators were transformed into witnesses. Due to the work’s close engagement with the rape and murder of a university student, Mendieta was not only signaling the erasure which frequently accompanies women’s experiences of sexual violence, but she was also allowing spectators to partake in the reworking of trauma through witnessing. Through this transformation, the work produced “a viewing public around a presumable private violence putting into question the scopophilic pleasure of the contemplative judging spectator” (Alvarado 2015, p. 79). The significance of making a private act of violence public was emphasized by Hal Foster, who argued that “the violated body is often the evidentiary basis of important witnessings to truth, of necessary testimonials against power” (Foster 1996, p. 123). Although Rape Scene was a performative act rather than an actual act of violence against the artist, its creation of a viewing public can be read as an attempt to seek validation and a path towards justice for victims of sexual violence, as well as for those of racially motivated violence, given that Mendieta produced what Alvarado describes as a “racially coded scene cued by the bondage of her wrist with rope, echoing a lashing or lynch scene” (Alvarado 2015, p. 79). By turning spectators into witnesses, the work forces viewers to acknowledge violent acts against women, particularly women of color, taking place on a daily basis. It is often the case that victims of such crimes are unable to tell their stories due to erasure, intimidation, and sometimes even death. Yet, through the use of testimonio, Mendieta sought to reveal the untold realities of victims in an attempt to publicly recognize their experiences and potentially keep them from reoccurring.

In addition to raising awareness of rape culture and encouraging empathy and reflection in viewers, Alvarado maintains that:

Rape Scene collapses the private and public realms and points to the culture of silence around the mistreatment of women that the audience then itself replicates through its (our) ‘wonder gaze,’… Audiences of the live performance (as well as those of the documentation) stand and watch the rape spectacle, violently impotent. Both performer and viewer carry with them the violence of the scene met by silence. Mendieta makes visible the Kantian expectation of a disinterested spectator but also the violence and complacency inherent in the passive contemplation of the taste-bearing subject of judgment.

(Alvarado 2015, p. 79)

Furthering Alvarado’s reading, I argue that Rape Scene also reveals the ways in which viewers become complicit in acts of violence taking place in front of them through passive contemplation, a point reinforced by Mendieta, who wrote, in an undated journal entry, that “to calmly observe a crime is to commit it,” which she paraphrased from a quote by Cuban poet José Martí (Alvarado 2015, p. 79). Therefore, although viewing and contemplating the violated body is seen as an important step with respect to witnessing truth and subsequently speaking truth to power, it is the passive contemplation of this very violence that complicates the work’s ability to serve as a space through which victims can effectively rework trauma.

Unlike other alternative forms of reworking trauma, such as BDSM practices,1 in which the traumatized body can willingly and actively reengage with its own trauma in the presence of another willing, active, and acknowledging body, works of performance art that follow a traditional artist–spectator model, in which the artist performs as viewers watch in silent stillness, are unable to provide victims with “an embodied feeling that one’s body is one’s own”, leaving them unable to reclaim their experiences (Hammers 2019, p. 495). Instead, such forms of performance art are often susceptible to a viewer’s “posture of silent contemplation” (Söllner 2014, p. 62). That is, rather than encouraging transformation, reflection, or action, traditional performances can desensitize viewers, transforming potential actors into passive onlookers. Moreover, while Mendieta’s Rape Scene may initially appear repulsive, I argue that it simultaneously invites a fetishizing gaze. Thus, although the somewhat public display of Mendieta’s seemingly violated body may appear to challenge the voyeuristic gaze, I propose that through the use of blood and bondage, Mendieta exposes the viewer’s “pure and impure desires” as they relate to sexual violence against women and people of color (Mahon 2005, p. 272). With this, I argue that performances that follow the artist–spectator model often fail to engage in the forms of embodied healing that are so central to sadomasochism and other embodied approaches to reworking trauma, given that, regardless of the narrative role being performed, spectators continue to partake passively.

3. A Move towards Embodiment

Our plan was to live in a golden cage for three days, presenting ourselves as undiscovered Amerindians from an island in the Gulf of Mexico that had somehow been overlooked by Europeans for five centuries. We called our homeland Guatinau, and ourselves Guatinauis. We performed our “traditional tasks”, which ranged from sewing voodoo dolls and lifting weights to watching television and working on a laptop computer. A donation box in front of the cage indicated that, for a small fee, I would dance (rap music), Guillermo would tell authentic Amerindian stories (in a nonsensical language), and we would pose for Polaroids with visitors. Two “zoo guards” would be on hand to speak to visitors (since we could not understand them), take us to the bathroom on leashes, and feed us sandwiches and fruit. At the Whitney Museum in New York we added sex to our spectacle, offering a peek at authentic Guatinaui male genitals for $5. A chronology with highlights from the history of exhibiting non-Western peoples was on one didactic panel and a simulated Encyclopaedia Britannica entry with a fake map of the Gulf of Mexico showing our island was on another.

(Fusco 1994, p. 145)

This passage provides an account of Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit…, a series of performances that took place from 1992 to 1993, in which artists Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña locked themselves in a cage outside of various cultural institutions, all of which were located in areas with problematic histories of xenophobia and colonization (Figure 1).2 Through this project, Cuban-American artist Fusco and Chicano artist Gómez-Peña form a critical dialogue between colonial histories of violence, enslavement, and Otherization and contemporary issues of ongoing racism against minority groups and other marginalized peoples in much of the West. The work itself directly references “the real history of ethnographic exhibition of human beings that has taken place in the West over the past five centuries”, as articulated by Fusco (Fusco 1994, p. 143). In her essay “The Other History of Intercultural Performance”, she describes the popular nineteenth century practice of exhibiting African, Native American, and Asian peoples in public places, such as theaters, museums, circuses, zoos, world’s fairs, and so-called freak shows, throughout North America and Europe (Fusco 1994, p. 146). Fusco then provides a timeline of specific events in which individuals of non-European races were turned into spectacles for the visual consumption of white viewers, dating from 1493 to 1992, the date upon which she began performing Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit… These events include the displaying of an Arawak in the Spanish Court after being brought to Spain by Christopher Columbus in 1493, Ringling Circus featuring fifteen Ubangis in 1931, including the largest-lipped women from the Congo, and the exhibiting of a black female dwarf at the Minnesota State Fair in 1992 (Fusco 1994, pp. 146–47). The themes encountered in this performance are increasingly relevant due to a number of events taking place in contemporary Western society, such as the ongoing immigration crisis in the United States, which has been characterized by images and video footage of children in cage-like settings that are displayed by media outlets periodically.

The current scholarship has largely turned towards museum studies in an effort to read the work as an attempt to activate “current controversies about what and how museums display” (Taylor 1998, pp. 163–64). For instance, in “A Savage Performance: Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco’s ‘Couple in the Cage’”, Diana Taylor maintains that museums “enact the knower/known relationship”, recording and exhibiting the history, traditions, and values of the known as the knower sees them (Taylor 1998, p. 164). She furthers this argument by claiming that the sheer monumentality of most museums makes apparent the “discrepancy in power between the society which can contain all others, and those represented only by remains, the shards and fragments salvaged in miniature displays” (Taylor 1998, p. 164). In Taylor’s view, Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit… “went along with the museum’s fictions of discontinuity, for the deracinated past and the informed present appeared to coexist on either side of the bars” (Taylor 1998, p. 164). Fusco’s own account of the performance similarly addresses the notion of fiction. In a 1993 interview, she stated that their original aim was not to convince spectators that their fictional Amerindian characters were real but, instead, to take an approach that would act as a satirical commentary on the bizarre and cruel history of exhibiting individuals of non-European backgrounds (Johnson 1993). However, when performing the work in Madrid, over half of the spectators believed that their disguises were real, an unforeseen circumstance that ultimately changed the work’s implications, as I will expand upon below (Johnson 1993).

While the artists originally intended for spectators to read the work as a mockery “on Western concepts of the exotic, primitive Other”, individuals engaged much more closely with the supposed undiscovered Amerindians within the cage, often in an objectifying and violent manner (Fusco 1994, p. 143). As articulated by Fusco, she and Gómez-Peña “assumed the stereotypical role of the domesticated savage”, while “many audience members felt entitled to assume the role of the colonizer” (Fusco 1994, p. 152). Thus, the structures of power present during the colonial era were replicated through this attempted mockery, revealing a sense of truth behind the fiction. While official structures of power in most Western countries claim to have rejected their colonial roots, Fusco argues that the “stereotypes about nonwhite people that were continuously reinforced by the ethnographic displays are still alive in high culture and the mass media”, clearly seen through the treatment of the fictional Amerindian bodies within the cage (Fusco 1994, p. 153). Fusco and Gómez-Peña were poked and prodded, sexualized, and Otherized, with spectators asking if they could see, in some instances even touch, their genitalia, while others complained that their skin did not appear dark enough for them to be real primitives, revealing that the white spectator’s “position as global [consumer] of exotic cultures, and the stress on authenticity as an aesthetic value, all remain fundamental to the spectacle of Otherness many continue to enjoy” (Fusco 1994, p. 152).

Although the cage in Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit… serves as a clear reference to the uneven power distribution between spectators and the supposed Amerindians, sexuality was also explicitly used as an Othering trope in this work. Fusco and Gómez-Peña took on traditional gender roles, with Fusco’s performance being one of beauty and timidity, while Gómez-Peña appeared overtly macho, wearing spiked gloves and a dog collar appearing to reference sadomasochism. By presenting Fusco as the sexualized body available for male consumption and Gómez-Peña as a sexual predator, the performance was speaking to the white viewer’s anxieties surrounding black sexuality. These anxieties have been captured by artists for centuries, with Anne-Louis Girodet’s Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Belley from 1797, in which he represented the black Senegalese male in the traditional National Convention uniform of the French Revolution, with his genitalia clearly defined through his trousers, being a conventional example due to the prominence placed on the sitter’s sexuality (Figure 2). Several contemporary artists, including African-American artist Kara Walker, have used exaggeration as a tool for raising awareness of these harmful stereotypes, creating overly sexualized images of black individuals, as seen in her seminal work Gone from 1994, in which one of the figures is carried into the air by his massive erection while a scene of underage interracial fellatio takes place nearby, amongst other sexual encounters (Figure 3). Fusco and Gómez-Peña similarly adopted modes of exaggeration to ironically sexualize their supposedly Amerindian bodies, attempting to formulate a humorous image of stereotypes surrounding the body of the Other. However, several spectators had overtly sexual reactions, with a few men in Madrid placing coins into the donation box to get Fusco to dance for them and show them her breasts and one woman in Irvine asking for a glove in order to touch Gómez-Peña’s genitals (Johnson 1993). These instances, as well as many others, display the subordinate position of the caged artists, who were unable to participate in the construction of the work’s meaning.

Upon first glance, the unequal interactions that transpired through Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit… seem unlikely to result in the reworking of trauma. Instead of serving as witnesses to the destructive repercussions of the colonial imaginary, many spectators became perpetrators themselves, ultimately maintaining, rather than reworking, colonial violence. However, through its documentation, the work was able to promote a sense of reflection, acting as a mirror through which spectators could view social behaviors as they would occur in a space that was technically fictional yet loaded with truths. Therefore, spectators acted out their fantasies and were subsequently forced to face them via photographs, video footage, and written and verbal accounts, as the artists deliberately planned for the performance to be recorded, with the footage from Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit… ultimately being turned into a documentary titled The Couple in the Cage: A Guatinaui Odyssey (Fusco and Heredia 1993). Through the deliberate documentation of the work, which included reactions from the spectators, the performance was turned into a mirror, even evidence, of the spectacularization of the Other, allowing for a rewiring of trauma-causing violence through the act of witnessing oneself repeating and perpetuating such behaviors. Ultimately, then, it is the work’s ability to allow for the embodiment of the colonizer position by the spectators who unknowingly perpetuated traumatizing acts of violence, and the subsequent witnessing of their own actions being carried out, that make this work successful as a form of engaging with and transforming trauma. This parallels Marinella Rodi-Risberg’s claim that a central part of examining the ethical implications of practices relating to trauma studies, such as the ways in which trauma is represented, “includes addressing issues of complicity in the construction of victims” (Rodi-Risberg 2018, p. 119). She argues that “focusing on perpetrators does not downplay the importance of engaging with victims” (Rodi-Risberg 2018, p. 119). Instead, giving witnesses the ability to understand the perpetrator’s perspective makes it nearly impossible for them to “deny [their] own complicity in violent histories and [their] own capacity for evil”, ultimately forcing them to acknowledge their role in perpetuating acts of violence (Craps et al. 2015, p. 916).

4. On Disembodied Embodiment and Other Final Thoughts

Throughout this article, several works of art by contemporary Cuban and diasporic artists have been analyzed as a means of examining the ways in which testimonio-driven art can serve as a tool for engaging with, and in some instances reworking, trauma. Several of the analyses revealed potential ethical issues that arise when considering graphic representations of traumatic experiences, such as the possibility of creating a space for the fetishization of violated female bodies or the perpetuation of apathetic responses from witnesses of violence, as seen in Mendieta’s Rape Scene. On the other hand, the analyses also exposed several approaches that artists can draw on when creating works that directly address trauma in order to encourage spectators to engage with transformative measures. For instance, having a strong reflective component, as seen through the purposeful documentation of Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit… and the subsequent release of its corresponding documentary, is constructive in that it allows spectators to be transformed into witnesses of their own harmful actions against others. This reflective component, therefore, has the potential to encourage the spectators turned witnesses to consider their actions in a more critical way moving forward.

Yet, the graphic nature of the works discussed uncovers a critical ethical concern when representing trauma, that of the potential to trigger survivors. Seeing a woman’s bound and bloodied body would most certainly be concerning to individuals who have experienced forms of sexual violence. Observing people of color in a cage as they powerlessly follow instructions from objectifying onlookers would similarly cause fear and upset for many. Although content warnings may prove beneficial within certain contexts, such as when exhibiting mature or triggering material within an enclosed gallery, there are instances in which content warnings are difficult, if not impossible, to execute successfully, including when displaying works in public spaces or when creating works that are meant to transpire organically.

An alternative form of representation that circumvents this dilemma is illustrated through Cuban artist González-Torres’s Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) from 1991, an example of a work that characterizes what I refer to as disembodied embodiment (Figure 4). As an openly gay male residing in New York City amidst the AIDS crisis, many of his works reference homosexuality, often in a subtle yet powerful way. Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.) is one of the artist’s most recognizable works, consisting of an endlessly renewable pile of individually wrapped candies with an “ideal” total weight of 175 lbs., a number that corresponds to his partner Ross Laycock’s healthy weight before contracting HIV. The work diminishes as visitors take candy from the pile and is then replenished in a cycle reminiscent of life and death, acting as a non-representational portrait of the artist’s partner that speaks to the deterioration of his body towards the end of his life.

Although many visitors who come across this work experience it as an exciting, pleasant moment amidst the highly regulated environment of the museum setting, we can also understand it as a reminder of our automatic willingness to participate in and contribute towards movements, ideas, and circumstances that we know very little about. We can consider that as the viewer unwraps and eats the candy, they become complicit in the disappearing process of HIV/AIDS patients, “akin to the years-long public health crisis of HIV/AIDS, during which many stigmatized the disease, leading to the failure to adequately support research or treatments, and ultimately, to thousands of premature deaths” (The Art Story 2017). Expanding upon this reading, the apparently harmless act of taking the candy may speak to one’s participation, sometimes unintentionally, in queer erasure, a consideration that reveals the constant negation of queerness that ultimately leads to a “lifetime of harms, bullying, and abuse for being queer” (Hammers 2019, p. 492). Disembodied embodiment in artistic practice can, therefore, offer an alternative to the more graphic and potentially triggering representations produced through artist-centered performances relating to trauma, in which the physical body, damaged and dehumanized, is put on display. Works like González-Torres’s instead offer an entirely symbolic form of engagement that parallels the very real experiences of survivors. That is, it reproduces the secrecy, shame, and silence that surrounds trauma in the everyday, accurately portraying erasure as a commonplace occurrence.

While the reworking of trauma is a complex process that can be approached through various strategies, this article examined the ways in which contemporary Cuban and diasporic artists have appropriated testimonio as a means of engaging with trauma. Although many of the narratives discussed were imaged as direct reflections of the artists’ own lived experiences, they have the capacity to speak to and for a wider group of individuals who have similarly experienced forms of gender, sexual, and racial trauma but have been unable to give expression to them. Furthermore, several of the works contested “the universalization of the victim’s identity” that often “turns the perpetrator into an unknowable, mysterious figure, who has nothing to do with us”, instead making witnesses aware of their own involvement in the creation and perpetuation of trauma (Craps et al. 2015, p. 916). Therefore, through a range of testimonio-driven strategies, the works discussed offer critical reflections for victims and perpetrators that relate to the AIDS crisis and violence against female and Latinx bodies. The experiences in focus throughout this article have produced personal, collective, and generational traumas that have rarely been acknowledged by Western societies, revealing the ways in which testimonio can function as a visual strategy for making visible previously erased or forgotten histories, while also acknowledging how they may create spaces with the potential to perpetuate gendered, racial, and sexually based violence.