The Undiscovered Amerindians

Coco Fusco

2012

An intaglio print that satirically stages a museum scene in which a caged Amerindian is presented as spectacle, critiquing how art institutions and viewers commodify Indigenous bodies.

The neat, cartoonlike line work and a deadpan caption make the juxtaposition of smiling Whitney Biennial visitors and a barred cage feel both familiar and disturbingly off‑balance, turning casual social banter into an act of voyeuristic cruelty.

Part of Fusco’s ongoing critique of colonial spectacle, the piece forces museums and viewers to confront how ethnographic display and institutional taste can reproduce racism and commodify living people.

Palette

Art Terms

Intaglio Print Institutional critique Conceptual art Figurative Investigating identity

Exhibitions

Committed to Print

1988

Modern Cuban Painters

1944

Some American Prints, 1949–50, from the Museum Collection

1951

New Acquisitions: Latin-American Art

1942