María Magdalena Campos Pons

María Magdalena Campos Pons
Born (1959-08-22)August 22, 1959
Matanzas, Cuba
Nationality Cuban-American
Education National School of Art in Havana, Graduate Institute of Art, Massachusetts College of Art and Design
Known for Photography, installations, audiovisual media, sculpture

María Magdalena Campos-Pons (born August 22, 1959) is a Cuban-born artist based in Boston. Campos-Pons works primarily in photography, performance, audiovisual media, and sculpture. She is considered a "key figure" among Cuban artists who found their voice in a post-revolutionary Cuba.[1] Her art deals with themes of gender and sexuality, multicultural identity (especially Cuban, Chinese, and Nigerian), Cuban culture, and religion/spirituality (in particular, Roman Catholicism and Santeria).[2]

Early life and education

Campos-Pons was born in Matanzas, Cuba, in 1959[3] and grew up in a sugar plantation town called La Vega in Cuba.[4] Her paternal great-grandparents were Nigerian (Yoruba). She also has Chinese and Hispanic heritage. Her African ancestors, who were brought over by sugar plantation owners in the late 19th century, retained many traditions and beliefs from Africa. Many of these passed-down traditions influenced and became part of Campos-Pons's art.[5] The African side of her family were forced to work as slaves on sugar plantations and as domestic servants.[6] The Chinese side of her family also worked in the sugar trade as indentured servants in the sugar mills.[7]

When she was young, Campos relates that during a trip to the National Cuban Museum of Fine Art, she distinctly felt that black Cubans were conspicuously missing from the art. She did not feel as though black Cubans were equally represented.[8]

Campos-Pons has described much of her art education as very traditional, rooted in drawing and sculpture.[8] She trained at the Escuela National de Arte in Havana between 1976 and 1979.[4] From 1980 to 1989, she attended Havana's Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA).[4] The ISA allowed students to be exposed to international artistic movements and develop art that drew from Cuba's unique "mixed traditions and cultures."[1]

Campos-Pons earned her MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 1988.[3] Before moving to Boston in 1991, she left Cuba to take a fellowship in Banff, Canada.[4] Since 1991 she has lived in Boston.[6]

Career

Between 1986 and 1989 Campos-Pons was professor of Painting and Aesthetic at the Instituto Superior de Arte. She started exhibiting internationally in 1984.[9] In the late 1980s, her art work gained "international recognition" with her abstract paintings dealing with female sexuality.[4] Her work coincides with the rise of the New Cuban Art movement.[1] The New Cuban Art movement began as a reaction against the repressive aspects of the Cuban state and the introduction of conceptual art.[10] The movement was less focused on technical skill and more on creating an art that was genuinely Cuban.[10] A large part of this artistic movement was the introduction of Afro-Cuban presence, both as artists and within the art itself.[10] Humor and spirituality were major themes in New Cuban Art.[10] Her early work, often consisting of separate, shaped canvases, suggested fragmentation of the female self and referenced Afro-Cuban myths. She also explored reproductive rights and feminism through her art.[1] Campos Pons work often revolves around feminist ideologies. In an interview with Lynne Bell, she stated: "My work in Cuba looked at issues of sexuality, women's place in society, and the representation of women in the history of art".[11] Since there was not a larger feminism movement in Cuba, it was only through the expression of art through artists like Campos-Pon and others that feminism was kept in the spotlight and popular consciousness.[1]

In the 1990s Campos-Pon explored her family's ties to slavery and the Santería tradition carried over by her Yoruba family members. Santería is a spiritual practice which was developed by African slaves in Cuba by combining influences from Yoruba and Roman Catholic religious systems. Santería is often referred to as a "woman’s religion" as it is a religion shaped by women and practiced largely by women.[12] Maria Magdalena Campos Pons uses Santería as a theme in her art to identify her Nigerian ancestry and Cuban heritage. She explores the rituals and symbols of Santeria in some of her work from this time period.[1] The Seven Powers Come by the Sea (1992) and The Seven Powers (1994) are installations that address slavery and make mention of various Yoruba gods and goddesses.

After 1994, there was a shift in Campos-Pons's work, and it became somewhat ethnographic."[1] This work is largely autobiographical and has tended to examine her ancestors' relationship with slavery and the sugar industry.[13] She started using large-format photographs which were often arranged into diptychs, triptychs or other configurations. These works are reminiscent of works by Lorna Simpson and Carrie Mae Weems.[1]

In the early 2000s, Campos-Pon began to create work that is more abstract and minimal than her earlier art.

Campos-Pon is interested in showing "crosscultural" and "crossgenerational" themes dealing with race and gender as "expressed in symbols of matriarchy and maternity."[14] Campos-Pons says: "Of merging ideas, merging of ethnicities, merging of traditions... I am as much black, Cuban, woman, Chinese. I am this tapestry of all of that, and the responses to that could be very complicated and could include even anguish and pain."[8] Other ideas that her work explores includes exile, immigration, memory and Cuba itself.[8]

Her art has been shown in scores of solo and group exhibitions, including solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City; the Venice Biennale; the Johannesburg Biennial; the First Liverpool Biennial; the Dakar Biennale in Senegal; and the Guangzhou Triennial in China.[15] Campos-Pons's work is in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Canada, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, the Miami Art Museum and the Fogg Art Museum.[16]

Campos-Pons currently teaches at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.[17]

Personal life

She is married to Neil Leonard, a composer and musician at the Berklee College of Music with whom she sometimes collaborates professionally.[17] Leonard has collaborated on several of her works, most notably, her exhibition in the Venice Biennale.[18] Leonard is a well-known composer and jazz musician, who has also had his work displayed during the Biennale.[18] In Campos Pons’ exhibition at the Cuban Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale, Leonard’s compositions accompanied her art, which art critic Holland Cotter describes as a "haunting, rhythmic, chantlike score, secular spiritual music for a New World".[18]

Art

The following are some examples of some of Campos Pons' art:

This work of art was displayed in the Cuban Pavilion during the Venice Biennale of 2013.[18] In this work, Campos Pons is dressed in a "neo-Byzantine costume combining elements of Chinese, Spanish and Afro-Caribbean attire", demonstrating visibly her intersectional cultural heritage.[18] There is also spiritual symbolism in the work, as Santeria, which plays a large symbolic role in Campos Pons’ art, is known for its dedication to its namesake, saints. In The Flag. Color Code Venice 13, Campos Pons appears as a cross-cultural saint. Campos Pons dressed in this attire for a guerilla performance in Piazza San Marco during the Venice Biennale, accompanied by the Cuban band "Los Hermanos Arango".[18]

This work of art was a video installation at the Vanderbilt Fine Arts exhibition "Mama/Reciprocal Energy".[19] The exhibition dealt with the dualism in the term "Mama", which, in addition to being an endearing word for mother in both English and Spanish, is a term that in some Latin and African American communities is used to degrade women.[19] Created soon after Campos Pons moved to the United States from Cuba, Spoken Softly with Mama deals with the feminist frustration of the perversion of the word by displaying soft, memory-like flashes of videos of maternal imagery.[19] This is a [20] to a description of the exhibition:

This work of art explores the creation of gender identity, and in particular deals with the construction of femininity.[21] The One That Carried Fire consists of organic lines and shapes of flowers painted in bright reds and pink, alluding to female reproductive organs.[21] At the bottom is Campos Pons’ self-portrait, whose natural hair holds a glowing orb connecting her to the burst of color and flowers, not only a physical connection with her femininity, but also a symbol of familial ties to her cultural heritage.[21]

Awards

Campos-Pons has received many awards and recognitions, including the "Mention of Honor", in 1986 in the XVIIIème Festival International de la Peinture, Château Musée, Cagnes Sur Mer, France. In 1990 Painting Fellowship, The Banff Centre for the Arts, Alberta, Canada, in 1992 Foreign Visiting Artist Grant, Media Arts, Canada Council, Canada, in 1994 Bunting Fellowship. Mary Ingraham Bunting Institute, Radcliffe Research and Study Center, Cambridge, MA and in 1995 Art Reach 95 Award, National Congress of Art & Design, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Exhibitions

Quotes

Further reading

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Snodgrass, Susan (November 2007). "Vestiges of Memory". Art in America. 95 (10): 176–183. ISSN 0004-3214. Retrieved 2 March 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Bell, Lynne. "History of People Who Were Not Heroes: A Conversation with Maria Magdalena Campos‐Pons." Third Text 12.43 (1998): 32-42. Print.
  3. 1 2 "Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons on Artnet". Artnet. Retrieved 2 February 2014.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 "Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons: Dreaming of an Island on Viet at Spelman College". Art News Daily. 10 September 2008. Retrieved 2 March 2015.
  5. ↑ Dowdy, Dru (2004). Retratos: 2,000 Years of Latin American Portraits. Yale University Press in association with San Antonio Museum of Art; National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; and El Museo del Barrio. p. 273. ISBN 1883502128.
  6. 1 2 Smee, Sebastian (12 September 2013). "Campos-Pons's ambitious 'My Mother Told Me' wanders". Retrieved 2 February 2014.
  7. ↑ Muehlig, Linda (2010). "Sugar: Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons". Smith College Museum of Art. Retrieved 2 March 2015.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Luis, William (Fall 2011). "Art and Diaspora: A Conversation with María Magdalena Campos-Pons". Afro-Hispanic Review. 30 (2): 155–166. ISSN 0278-8969. Retrieved 2 March 2015.
  9. ↑ "Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons". School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Retrieved 2 March 2015.
  10. 1 2 3 4 Cuban Art Wikipedia
  11. ↑ Bell, Lynne. "History of People Who Were Not Heroes: A Conversation with Maria Magdalena Campos‐Pons."p 33.
  12. ↑ Gutierrez, Eddy. "The Importance of Women in Santeria." Santeria Church of the Orishas. 27 June 2012. Web. 25 Oct. 2015.
  13. ↑ "Zadok Gallery". Zadok Gallery. Retrieved 2 February 2014.
  14. ↑ Ladd, Florence (May 2006). "Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons". Women's Review of Books. 23 (3). ISSN 0738-1433. Retrieved 2 March 2015.
  15. ↑ "María Magdalena Campos Pons". AfroCubaWeb. Retrieved 2 February 2014.
  16. ↑ "Magdalena Campos-Pons: My Mother Told Me" (PDF). Tufts University Art Gallery: Aidekman Arts Center. Tufts University. September 2013. Retrieved 2 March 2015.
  17. 1 2 "Faculty Member Magda Campos-Pons Invited to Venice Biennale". School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston Blog. 20 May 2013. Retrieved 2 February 2014.
  18. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Cotter, Holland. "María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Neil Leonard."The New York Times. The New York Times, 26 Sept. 2013. Web. 25 Oct. 2015.
  19. 1 2 3 Weinhuff, Christi. "Mama/Reciprocal Energy: Reciprocity as an Agent of Identity Formation in the Works of Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons." Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal 8 (2012): 1-11. Print.
  20. ↑ link
  21. 1 2 3 http://www.nashvillescene.com/nashville/mara-magdalena-campos-pons-explores-memory-with-a-video-installation-at-the-frist/Content?oid=2656732
  22. ↑ Hicks, Cinque (2008). "Dreaming of an Island makes waves at the Spelman Museum of Fine Art". Creative Loafing: Atlanta. Retrieved 2 March 2015.
  23. 1 2 Luis, William. "Art and diaspora: a conversation with Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons." Afro-Hispanic Review 30.2 (2011): 155-166. Academic OneFile. Web. 25 Oct. 2015.
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