Made in collaboration with filmmaker Paula Heredia, The Couple in the Cage documents the performance Coco Fusco developed together with Guillermo Gómez Peña titled Two undiscovered amerindians visit the west. Created in 1992 during the 5th centenary of America’s colonization, the artists presented themselves as two members of a yet not known tribe of the gulf of Mexico -the Guatinaus-, through the colonial dispositif of the human zoo, sparking debate with the public on anthropological exhibition forms, the viewpoint of history and progress, and our relation with the other, as the majority of the audiences believed in the authenticity of the performance.
Little known is that the cannibal inaugurated in a way the tradition of the human zoo: Columbus’ third trip brought back around 1500 two “carib cannibal” specimens that were publicly exposed in a square in the centre of Madrid, nurturing the objectification of alterity that would become art and science in the centuries to come.