María Magdalena Campos-Pons | ONLINE Artist Talk

Join us online in the Griffin Zoom Room Thursday September 9th at 7pm Eastern for a conversation with Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons.

María Magdalena Campos-Pons combines and crosses diverse artistic practices, including photography, painting, sculpture, film, video, and performance. Her work addresses issues of history, memory, gender, and religion; it investigates how each one of these themes informs identity formation.

Born in 1959 in the city of Matanzas she grew up in La Vega, a town in the province of Matanzas, Cuba, Campos-Pons is a descendant of Nigerians who had been brought to the island and enslaved in the 19th century. She grew up learning firsthand about the legacy of slavery along with the beliefs of Santería, a Yoruba-derived religion. Directly informed by the traditions, rituals, and practices of her ancestors, her work is deeply autobiographical. Often using herself and her Afro-Cuban relatives as subjects, she creates historical narratives that illuminate the spirit of people and places, past and present, thereby rendering universal relevance from personal history. Recalling dark narratives of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, her imagery and performances honor the labor of black bodies on indigo and sugar plantations, renew Catholic and Santería religious practices, and celebrate revolutionary uprisings in the Americas. As she writes, “I…collect and tell stories of forgotten people in order to foster a dialogue to better understand and propose a poetic, compassionate reading of our time.”