Cuban artist Tania Bruguera’s Turbine Hall installation will have visitors crying

As part of her forthcoming Turbine Hall takeover at Tate Modern, Cuban performance and installation artist Tania Bruguera is going to make you cry, whether you like it or not.

10,142,926, which opens at the Bankside gallery tomorrow, is being billed as “the first community-driven Turbine Hall Commission,” and reflects the artist’s ongoing investigations into “the status of the neighbour and what it means to act and interact locally.”

Taking its title from the number of people who migrated from one country to another last year added to the current number of migrant deaths recorded since the beginning of the project, Tania has committed to ensuring that Tate Modern, as an institution and as a space, makes an active effort to think in a community-minded manner.

To that end she has enlisted 21 local residents — all of whom live or work in the same postcode as the gallery — to come together to consider what Tate can learn from interacting with the local community and how they can adapt to its needs. Their first action sees the gallery’s Boiler House building being renamed in honour of a local campaigner and activist. The Natalie Bell building will be named as such for the next year. The Tate Neighbours, as they are known, have also written a manifesto “proposing a culture of connection and mutual commitment,” and all visitors to the gallery will have a chance to read it, as it’ll appear when they connect to Tate Modern’s WiFi.

10,142,926 sees Tania conducting a series of “stealth” interventions. These include a heat-sensitive floor which reveals the image of a Syrian refugee when subject to enough body heat, and a room in which a tearing agent in an attempt to “break down our usual social barriers and lead to an emotional shared response,” as the Tate put it.

Tania’s Turbine Hall takeover runs until 24 February 2019.