Campos-Pons, “a leading artist of the Afro-Cuban diaspora,” presented her work within the context of ritual and spirituality, in the process divulging some personal history to help viewers better understand the relationship between the art and the artist.

Portraits of Desire

Special talk and opening reception

10/12/2011, 5:30 pm – 8:00 pm

Vanderbilt University

Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons: MAMA/RECIPROCAL ENERGY will be the first exhibition that examines this internationally recognized artist’s drawings. Five large-scale, mixed-media drawings, works that the artist created as a means to explore themes central to her practice, such as issues of identity, exile and displacement as a Afro-Cuban artist living in America, will be included. In addition to these works, drawings that address specific performances the artist has presented over the course of her career, one of which is a collaborative work she created with her son, will also be featured. This later body of work is the artist’s attempt at “putting the [performances] in a memory box, [in order to create] the essence of the moment.” The drawings will be accompanied by a three-channel video work that examines questions surrounding the nature of energy from an intriguing perspective.

Born in Matanzas in 1959, Campos-Pons was educated in Cuba at the National School of Art (1976ñ1979) and Instituto Superior de Arte (1980-1985) and graduated from Massachusetts College of Art in 1988. She is one of the most significant artists to emerge from the Cuban post-revolutionary era. She moved to North America in 1991 and now lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, with her husband, the composer and performing artist Neil Leonard, and their son.

Newark Museum

In 1939, anthropologist Fernando Ortiz characterized Cuban culture as ajiaco, a rich stew consisting of a large variety of ingredients. The ingredients of the “stew” include Catholicism brought in by the Spaniards; the spirituality of the Yoruba slaves and their cultural traditions from Africa; and the Chinese indentured servants who brought Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. The base of the stew is the indigenous people, such as Tainos, who were almost wiped out by the Spaniards. This exhibition is a survey of modern and contemporary Cuban artists that explores these rich cultural roots of Cuban art. In contemporary society, the “stew” has become thicker and richer as the influences become more complex and intermixed: the artist now borrows not only from the traditional cultures that populated the island, but also appropriates from contemporary everyday life. The exhibition includes works by leading artists in a variety of media, from paintings, works on paper and photography to mixed-media sculpture and installations.