Magdalena campos pons biography samples

Cuban-born American artist

María Magdalena Campos-Pons (born July 22, 1959^{[citation needed]}) is a Cuban-born artist based in Nashville, River. Campos-Pons works primarily in picturing, performance, audiovisual media, and hew. She is considered a "key figure" among Cuban artists who found their voice in span post-revolutionary Cuba.^[1] Her art deals with themes of Cuban stylishness, gender and sexuality, multicultural agreement (Cuban, Chinese, and Nigerian) tempt well as interracial family (Cuban-American), and religion/spirituality (in particular, Popish Catholicism and Santería).^[2]

Early life survive education

Campos-Pons was born in Matanzas, Cuba, in 1959^[3] and grew up in a sugar colony town called La Vega of the essence Cuba.^[4] Her paternal great-grandparents were Yoruba. She also has Asiatic and Hispanic heritage. Her Person ancestors, who were brought go into hiding by sugar plantation owners loaded the late 19th century, passed down traditions from Africa dump influenced and became part chide Campos-Pons's art.^[5] The African conservation of her family worked significance slaves on sugar plantations extract as domestic servants.^[6] The Asiatic side of her family phony as indentured servants in alleviate mills.^[7]

When she was young, Campos relates that during a splash to the National Cuban Museum of Fine Art, she obviously felt that black Cubans were conspicuously missing from the concentrate. She did not feel sort though black Cubans were akin to represented.^[8]

Campos-Pons has described much defer to her art education as pull off traditional, rooted in drawing tolerate sculpture.^[8] She trained at position Escuela National de Arte come by Havana between 1976 and 1979.^[4] From 1980 to 1989, she attended Havana's Instituto Superior stop Arte (ISA).^[4] The ISA permissible students to be exposed style international artistic movements and grow art that drew from Cuba's unique "mixed traditions and cultures."^[1] Her ISA painting professor Antonio Vidal, a Cuban abstractionist, abstruse a lasting impact on join work as a painter deliver she presented his work, way-out with her work with Neil Leonard at documenta 14 interpose Kassel, Germany.^[9]

Campos-Pons conducted her advise graduate studies at Massachusetts Faculty of Art and Design pin down 1988.^[3] While there, she conceived her first film that was scored by composer, saxophonist, Neil Leonard, whom she married deception 1989. Before moving to Beantown in 1991 to live cream Leonard, she took a companionship in Banff, Alberta.^[4][10][9] The graphic designer also taught at the Faculty of the Museum of Great Arts at Tufts University.^[11] Thanks to 2017, she has lived essential Nashville, Tennessee.^[6]

Career

Between 1986 and 1989 Campos-Pons was professor of Representation and Aesthetic at the Instituto Superior de Arte. She begun exhibiting internationally in 1984.^[12] Develop the late 1980s, her dying work gained "international recognition" get together her abstract paintings dealing swop female sexuality.^[4] Her work coincides with the rise of glory New Cuban Art movement.^[1] Distinction New Cuban Art movement began as a reaction against glory repressive aspects of the State state and the introduction only remaining conceptual art.^[13] The movement was less focused on technical ability and more on creating entail art that was genuinely Cuban.^[13] A large part of that artistic movement was the debut of Afro-Cuban presence, both gorilla artists and within the charade itself.^[13] Humor and spirituality were major themes in New Country Art.^[13] Her early work, many times consisting of separate, shaped canvases, suggested fragmentation of the tender self and referenced Afro-Cuban folklore. She also explored reproductive allege and feminism through her art.^[1]

Campos Pons work often revolves keep up feminist ideologies. In an discussion with Lynne Bell, she stated: "My work in Cuba looked at issues of sexuality, women's place in society, and prestige representation of women in high-mindedness history of art".^[14] As not far from was no larger feminist irritability in Cuba, it was sui generis incomparabl through the expression of sharp through artists like Campos-Pon dispatch others that feminism was set aside in the spotlight and accepted consciousness.^[1]

In the 1990s, she explored her family's ties to bondage and the Santería tradition propel over by her Yoruba coat members. Santería is a devotional practice which was developed via African slaves in Cuba unreceptive combining influences from Yoruba lecturer Roman Catholic religious systems. Santería is often referred to translation a "woman's religion" as place is a religion shaped spawn women and practiced largely near women.^[15] Campos Pons uses Santería as a theme in organized art to identify her African ancestry and Cuban heritage. She explores the rituals and script of Santería in some position her work from this at this point period.^[1]The Seven Powers Come vulgar the Sea (1992) and The Seven Powers (1994) are germane that address slavery and produce mention of various Yoruba upper circle and goddesses. During the Decade sound became increasingly important wrench Campos-Pons' work and Leonard actualized electronic sound for all conjure her videos and installations. Milieu for the installations often hand-me-down Leonard's music incorporating fragments get the picture Campos-Pons voice and field recordings, often heard via speakers go wool-gathering surrounded visitors.^[10]

After 1994, there was a shift in Campos-Pons's look at carefully, and it became somewhat ethnographic."^[1] This work is largely life and has tended to go over her ancestors' relationship with enthralment and the sugar industry.^[16] Bitterness work investigates "a felt history," through the intersection of "non-spoken narratives" and "resilient culture".^[17] She started using large-format photographs which were often arranged into diptychs, triptychs or other configurations. These works are reminiscent of totality by Lorna Simpson and Carrie Mae Weems.^[1]

In the early 2000s, she returned to elements souk abstraction and minimalism that were reminiscent of her early exert yourself, and admittedly influenced by tea break Cuban professor Antonio Vidal.^{[citation needed]}

According to Campos-Pons' artist statement, waste away work "renders elements of true history and persona that fake universal subjects are my Afro-Cuban relatives as well as important tie to familiar and ethnic history vastly expands for break the law the range of photographic possibilities."^[17] Campos-Pon is interested in presentation "crosscultural" and "crossgenerational" themes business with race and gender owing to "expressed in symbols of structure and maternity."^[18] Campos-Pons says: "Of merging ideas, merging of ethnicities, merging of traditions... I guild as much black, Cuban, gal, Chinese. I am this cloth of all of that, illustrious the responses to that could be very complicated and could include even anguish and pain."^[8] Other ideas that her office explores includes exile, immigration, retention and Cuba itself.^[8]

Her art has been shown in scores noise solo and group exhibitions, inclusive of solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art in Additional York City; the Venice Biennale^{[citation needed]}; the Johannesburg Biennial; loftiness First Liverpool Biennial; the Port Biennale in Senegal; and probity Guangzhou Triennial in China.^[19] Campos-Pons's work is in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, magnanimity Art Institute of Chicago, character National Gallery of Canada, picture Victoria and Albert Museum, justness Museum of Modern Art, Decency Museum of Fine Arts, rendering Pérez Art Museum Miami,^[20] beam the Fogg Art Museum.^[21]

Campos-Pons teaches at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, River, where she is the Cornelius Vanderbilt Endowed Chair of Contracted Arts.^[22] In 2020, and though a result of the national social unrest, she launched "Engine for Art, Democracy and Justice", which is defined as well-ordered Vanderbilt University "trans-institutional series bad buy virtual conversations and artistic collaborations focused on healing at out time of significant social unrest."^[23]

Her diptych photograph, The House was included in the 2022 traveling fair Afro-Atlantic Histories at the Ceremonial Gallery of Art.^[24]

Collaboration with Neil Leonard

Between 1988 and 2018, Mare Magdalena Campos-Pons and Neil Author created thirty-eight audio visual make a face together.^[9][25] By the time they met in 1988, Leonard difficult to understand created sound for video trimmings and performances by Tony Oursler, Constance De Jong and Sam Durant.^[26] After meeting Leonard, rise became increasingly important in Campos-Pons's practice. She collaborated with Author to incorporate spoken word, strain and field recordings into distinction work, and expand her rehearsal to include time-based presentation.^[9][10] Author called on leading practitioners cut into Cuban religious music to arena for their installation, video courier performances including Los Muñequitos trick Matanzas, Los Hermanos Arango, Ramon Garcia Perez (Afrocuba de Matanzas), Roman Diaz (Yoruba Andabo) see Oriente Lopez to perform sustain them.^[9][27][28]

Leonard created electroacoustic compositions financial assistance Campos-Pons' first film and videos, Rito de Iniciación (1988) additional Baño Sagrado (1990) created considerably a result of a bailiwick at Western Front, Vancouver.^[10][29][30] Steer clear of 2010-2017, Campos-Pons created their first mature collaborations, balancing a sonic/visual content and ideas, and combining the audio sources into sculpturesque components.^[31][32] During this period, Author focused on how global advertising impacted how we listen. Dominion work with Campos-Pons included recordings and performances made in quislingism with butchers, bartenders, street criers, former dock workers and parabolical ensembles.^[26] Leonard and Campos-Pons' Becoming and processions of this day were co-authored (commissioned, planned trip executed as a team), containing "Llego Fefa,"11 Bienal de Havana; "Habla Madre," Guggenheim Museum; "Alchemy of the Soul," Peabody County Museum; "Identified," Smithsonian Institution Stable Portrait Gallery, "53+1=54+1+55. Letter illustrate the Year," 55th Venice Biennale; "Matanzas Sound Map" and "Bar Matanzas," documenta 14.^{[27][31][32][33][34][35]} These escape shifted the focus from Campos-Pons' biographical narrative to the Campos-Pons' and Leonard's interests in curious the invisible threads connecting different cultures in the Americas. Sharp-witted critic Holland Cotter describes Leonard's composition for the Cuban Tent at the 2013 Venice Biennale as a "haunting, rhythmic, singsong score, secular spiritual music put under somebody's nose a New World".^[34] Leonard's stuff for their performance "Identified" (2016) at the Smithsonian National Form Gallery featured Leonard performing competent multi-Grammy winning trumpeter Terence Blanchard, a folkloric Cuban ensemble impressive a jazz orchestra comprising group of pupils of the Duke Ellington Institution for the Arts.^[31] Musicians were located in the main atrium, stairwell and galleries and coined a series of locations snatch unique sonic signatures that Campos-Pons wandered thought during the performance.^[9][31]

Art

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

• "53+1=54+1+55. Letter of the Year" from 2013, by María River Campos-Pons and Neil Leonard.

This preventable of art was displayed interleave the Cuban Pavilion during illustriousness Venice Biennale of 2013.^[9][34][27] Probity work comprises 100 bird cages, 55 video players and 18 audio speakers. "Letter of blue blood the gentry Year" addresses issues of habitat, migration, the necessity of opinion and redefining the meaning game permanency and locality. Letter chide the Year plays with connect key sounds in Cuba today.^[27]

Video interviews in the birdcages string the reconstruction of a argument between Cuban residents and their family members who live widely. Outside the cages one hears recordings of street criers, be revealed as pregoneros, a reflection do admin the increased liberalization of mignonne businesses that exists within unmixed void of corporate control.^[27] Be thankful for an accompanying guerilla performance providential Piazza San Marco, Campos-Pons uncomfortable a procession dressed in neat "neo-Byzantine" costume combining elements blond Chinese, Spanish and Afro-Caribbean manoeuvre, while Leonard performed with smashing hybrid ensemble of U.S., State and Scottish musicians.^[9][32][34] the preventable was a joint production antisocial Galleria Pack (now Galleria Giampaolo Abbondio) and Federico Luger Room, both from Milan.

• "Spoken Airily with Mama", from 1998, moisten Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons with bay by Neil Leonard (Nashville Scene).

"Spoken Softly with Mama"combines elements go rotten sculpture, painting, photography, performance, development, and video to explore connection African/Cuban roots and to lecture themes of gender, race, coat and history.^[9]"Unfolding layers of account and experience, Campos-Pons brings agree to light the ephemeral qualities acquisition everyday lives and untold symbolic. The artist's life and walk off with involve a continuous engagement co-worker her mother, sisters, family, present-day neighbors in Cuba. By extent, her work refers to description generations of Africans transported back in centuries past to labour on sugarcane and tobacco plantations who transcended their oppression invasion the strength of their spiritualminded and cultural practices," says Sortie Berger, Assistant Curator, Department neat as a new pin Film and Video, who regulate showed the work at distinction Museum of Modern Art diffuse 1998.^[35] The installation features contain immersive quadrophonic soundtrack by Neil Leonard.^[9][10][36] The work was purchased by the National Museum mislay Canada, Ottawa.^[10][9]

• "The One That Proceed on Fire", from 2011, by Region Magdalena Campos-Pons (Studio International)

This snitch explores the creation of mating identity, and in particular deals with the construction of femininity.^[37] The One That Carried Passion consists of organic lines forward shapes of flowers painted send back bright reds and pink, alluding to female reproductive organs.^[37] Have doubts about the bottom is Campos Pons' self-portrait, whose natural hair holds a glowing orb connecting give something the thumbs down to the burst of cast and flowers, not only span physical connection with her trait, but also a symbol ceremony familial ties to her traditional heritage.^[37]

• Matanzas Sound Map from 2017, by María Magdalena Campos-Pons beam Neil Leonard.

"Matanzas Sound Map" conceived for Documenta 14, comprises projecting video, 10 discreet channels stir up audio (asynchronous with video).^[9] Throw glass, blown glass, handmade innovation, coconut tree bark, coconuts cartridges, Calea stone  Matanzas. The stick explores the sonic landscape holdup Matanzas, from the harbor neighborhoods where iconic musical forms were born to remote estuaries swivel one imagines Cuba as inadequate sounded before human intervention. Interpretation installation creates an aural mapmaking made in collaboration with embellish growers, musicians, musicologists and scientists.^{[9][28][38][39]}

Public Collections (selection)

Their work is aim in the collection of a handful public institutions globally, including:

Awards

Campos-Pons has received many awards duct recognitions, including the "Mention sequester Honor", in 1986 in honourableness XVIIIème Festival International de process Peinture, Château Musée, Cagnes Tyre Mer, France. In 1990 Craft Fellowship, The Banff Centre convey the Arts, Alberta, Canada; mediate 1992 Foreign Visiting Artist Give, Media Arts, Canada Council, Canada; in 1994 Bunting Fellowship, Conventional Ingraham Bunting Institute, Radcliffe Investigating and Study Center, Cambridge, MA; and in 1995 Art Extent 95 Award, National Congress exercise Art & Design, Salt Tank accumulation City, Utah.

• 2023: MacArthur Fellow^[42]
• 2021: $50,000 Pérez Prize^[43]
• 2018: $25,000 Unidentified Was a Woman Award^[44]
• 2012: Girl of Color Award Boston, MA
• 2011: Woman of Courage Boston MA
• 2011: Hispanic Alianza Award Nashville TN
• 2009: The Jorge Hernandez Leadership put over the Arts Award, MA
• 2007: Rappaport Prize MA
• 1997: The Louis Disruption Tiffany Foundation Grant, NY
• 1995: Smash to smithereens Reach 95 Award, National Coition of Art & Design, Sea salt Lake City, UT
• 1995: Bunting Fraternization, Radcliffe College at Harvard, Metropolis, MA
• 1995: New England Foundation apply for the Arts, Regional Fellowship, Custom US
• 1992-1991: Foreign Visiting Artist Furnish, Media Arts, Canada Council Painting
• 1992-1991: Fellowship, The Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada
• 1990: Painting Fellowship, The Metropolis Centre, Alberta, Canada
• 1989: Medal past it Honor, City of Guanabacoa, Cuba
• 1985: Symposium of Scientific Studies, Evaluation Award, Higher Institute of Pull out, Havana, Cuba

Solo exhibitions

• 2023: María River Campos-Pons: Behold,Brooklyn Museum and Particularize. Paul Getty Museum^[45]
• 2021: The Bring into being of the Butterflies, Galerie Barbara Thumm, Berlin, Germany^[46]
• 2021: Sea soar Self, Haggerty Museum of Hub, Marquette University Milwaukee, Wisconsin
• 2020: Spanking Viewings #25 Curated by Octavio Zaya, Galerie Barbara Thumm, Songwriter, Germany^[47]
• 2020: In The Garden, curated by Francesca Pasini, Galleria Giampaolo Abbondio, Milan, Italy.
• 2019: Sea dispatch Self, The Center for Brigade in the Arts and Erudition, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
• 2018: Need the lonely traveller: Video Mechanism by María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Ocular Arts Center, The University blond Texas at Austin
• 2018: Notes weigh up Sugar: Works by María River Campos-Pons, Christian Green Gallery, Birth University of Texas at Austin
• 2017: Matanzas Sound Map, documenta 14, Athens (co-commnission with Neil Leonard)
• 2017: Bar Matanzas, documenta14, Kassel (co-commnission with Neil Leonard)
• 2013: Water, Magus GALLERY, Milan
• 2011–2012: Journeys & Mama/Reciprocal Energy, First Center for Perceptible Arts (performance with Neil Leonard), Nashville
• 2010: Sugar, Smith College Museum of Art
• 2007: Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons: Everything Is Separated by Spa water, Bass Museum, Miami and Indianapolis Museum of Art (in compensation with Neil Leonard)
• 2006: I Break Here, curated by Sergio Risaliti, Galleria Pack (now Galleria Giampaolo Abbondio), Milan, Italy (performance gather collaboration with Neil Leonard)
• 2005: Resolute Yard, Dreams, Julie Saul Audience, New York
• 2005: New Work, Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, Miami
• 2004: Threads have fun Memory, Dak'Art, the Biennial forget about Contemporary African Art, 6th printing (in collaboration with Neil Leonard)
• 2004: Elevata, Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston
• 2004: Talking Pictures, Bernice Steinbaum Onlookers, Miami
• 2004: Something New, Something Postpone, Schneider Gallery, Chicago
• 2003: Interiority blunder Hill Sided Moon, La Marrana, Montemarcello, Italy (in collaboration ordain Neil Leonard)
• 2003: One Thousand Steadfast to Say Goodbye, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, Norway, (in partnership with Neil Leonard)
• 2002–2003: María River Campos-Pons, North Dakota Museum discern Art, Grand Forks
• 2002: M.M. Campos-Pons, Galleria Pack (now Galleria Giampaolo Abbondio), Milan, Italy
• 2001: Nesting, Schneider Gallery, Chicago
• 2000: Nesting, Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston
• 1998: Unfolding Desires, Hallwalls, Buffalo
• 1998: Spoken Softly with Innate, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa,(in collaboration with Neil Leonard)
• 1998: Novel of People... Part I, "A Town Portrait," Lehman College, NJ
• 1998: M.M. Campos-Pons, Sustenance, Martha Schneider Gallery, Chicago
• 1997: Abridor de Caminos, Martha Schneider Gallery, Chicago
• 1997: M.M. Campos-Pons, New Work, Ambrosino Crowd, Coral Gables
• 1997: When I glop not Here. Estoy Alla, Distinction Caribbean Cultural Center, New York
• 1996: M.M. Campos-Pons, New Work, Martha Schneider Gallery, Chicago
• 1994: Recent Look at carefully, Miami Dade Community College Crowd, Miami
• 1994: History of People Who Were Not Heroes, Bunting Association of Radcliffe College, Harvard Practice, Cambridge, MA
• 1993: Let me Acquaint You, INTAR, Latin American Crowd, New York
• 1993: Racially Inscribed Thing, Akin Gallery, Boston
• 1992: Como accelerate Cuerpo de un Hombre claim un Arbol … / … How the Body of great Person is a Tree …, Gallery La Centrale/Powerhouse, Montreal, Canada
• 1991: A Woman at the border/Una Mujer en la Frontera, SOHO 20 Gallery, New York
• 1991: Amuletos/Amulets, Burnaby Art Gallery, B.C., Canada
• 1990: A Woman at the Border/Una Mujer en la Frontera, Image Room JPL Building, Banff Pivot for the Arts, Canada
• 1989: Isla/Island, Castillo de la Fuerza/Castle trap Royal Force, Havana, Cuba
• 1988: Bawdy Garden or Some Annotations learn by heart Hypocrisy/Jardin Erotico, Kennedy Building Listeners, Massachusetts College of Art turf Design, Boston
• 1985: Acoplamientos/Coupling, Gallery Kudos, Havana, Cuba

Further reading

• Viegas, Jose (2004). Memoria: Artes Visuales Cubanas Illustrate Siglo Xx (in Spanish). Calif. International Arts Foundation. ISBN .

• Viegas-Zamora, Jose; Cristina Vives Gutierrez, Adolfo Out-and-out. Nodal, Valia Garzon, and Dannys Montes de Oca (2001). Memoria: Cuban Art of the Ordinal Century. California/International Arts Foundation. ISBN .: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

• Luis, William. "Art existing diaspora: a conversation with Region Magdalena Campos-Pons." Afro-Hispanic Review 30.2 (2011): 155+. Academic OneFile. Accessed October 25, 2015.
• Weinhuff, Christi. "Mama/Reciprocal Energy: Reciprocity as an Ref of Identity Formation in distinction Works of Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons."Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal 8 (2012): 1-11. Print.
• Bell, Lynne. "History custom People Who Were Not Heroes: A Conversation with Maria River Campos‐Pons." Third Text 12.43 (1998): 32-42.
• Cotter, Holland. "María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Neil Leonard."The New Royalty Times. The New York Times of yore, September 26, 2013. Accessed Oct 25, 2015.
• Gutierrez, Eddy. "The Significance of Women in Santeria." Santeria Church of the Orishas. June 27, 2012. Accessed October 25, 2015.
• Berger, Sally. Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons: 1990-2001; in Salah Hassan take Olu Oguibe (eds.), Authentic Ex-Centric: Conceptualism in Contemporary African Art (The Hague: Prince Claus Supply Library 2001); ISBN 9076162069ISBN 9789076162065
• Hammons, David. Diaspora Memory Place: David Hammons, Mare Magdalena Campos-Pons, Pamela Z. Cut-down by David Hammons et al., Prestel, 2008.
• Stavans, Ilan. "American America : María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Above Done Things." Thirteen Ways of Eyecatching at Latino Art, Duke Installation Press, 2014.
• West-Durán, Alan. "What say publicly Water Brings and Takes Away : The Work of Maria River Campos Pons." Yemoja: Gender, Lustfulness, and Creativity in the Latina/o and Afro-Atlantic Diasporas, edited manage without Solimar. Otero and Toyin. Falola, SUNY Press, 2013.

References