| Dates: | born 1959
| | Biography: | 1959 Born in Matanzas, Cuba.
Lives and works in Boston
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1998 Spoken Softly With Mama, National
Gallery of Canada, Ottowa; Museum of
Modern Art, New York
M. M. Campos-Pons: New Work,
Hallwalls, Buffalo, New York
1990 A Woman at the Border/Una Mujer
en la Frontera, Banff Center for the Arts,
Canada
Embassy Cultural House, London,
Ontario
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
1998 Desde el Cuerpo: Alegoria de lo
Femenino, Museo de Bellas Artes,
Caracas
1997 Trade Routes: History &
Geography, 2nd Johannesburg Biennale,
Johannesburg
When I am not Here: Estoy Alla, The
Carribean Center, New York
1996 Latin-American Women Artists,
1915-1995, Denver Art Museum, Denver;
National Museum of Women in the Arts,
Washington DC; Center for the Fine
Arts, Miami, Florida
1995 Latin-American Women Artists,
1915-1995, Milwaukee Art Museum,
Milwaukee;
Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, Nevada
Human/Nature, The New Museum of
Contemporary Art, New York
1994 Rejoining the Spiritual: The Land in
Latin American Art, The Maryland
Institute
College of Art, Baltimore Fotofest,
International Festival of Photography,
George R. Brown Convention
Center, Houston, Texas
Transcending the Borders of Memory,
Norton Gallery and School of Art, West
Palm Beach, Florida
1988 Made in Havana, The Art Gallery of
New South Wales, Sydney; Australian
Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne | | | Source: | "Trace, 1st Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art", Festival catalogue | | | Date of source: | 1999 |
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| | Description: | Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons has
made the journey from Cuba to America,
continuing the displacement begun when
her Yoruba ancestors were shipped from
Nigeria as slaves. Her work traces the
histories of people for whom the past is
not as distant as we might like to think.
Campos-Pons's grandfather was
transported to Cuba to work on the Vega
sugar plantation and her family was still
living and working on the plantation when
she was growing up. With an oral
tradition that kept their connection to
Africa very much alive, the artist's friends
and family were a living testament to this
history of displacement.
The Seven Powers Came by the Sea
(1992) deals with this history. The Seven
Powers are based on templates for the
stowing of slaves on the transport ships
that once sailed from West Africa to the
Caribbean after trading manufactured
goods brought from Liverpool. The layout
of the bodies on the slave boards is a
powerful image of the conjunction of
mathematical efficiency and brutality.
Campos-Pons also uses photography,
film and video in her work. At Bluecoat
Arts Centre the seven slave boards are
leant against the wall, evoking the
Yoruba deities transposed to the new
world. On the floor in front of them texts
and small framed photographs of African
Cubans are arranged in groups like
family photographs. There is a further
suggestion of headstones or silent
memorials to the generations uprooted
and separated by the slave trade.
Objects associated with forced labour
often accompany these memori¬als.
Unfolding Desires (1 997) comprises
seven old wooden ironing boards placed
in a spiral arrangement, each stacked
with neatly folded white sheets. The
worn and chipped boards retain the
traces of many years of repetitive
domestic labour while the shape and
rhythmic arrangement of the boards
suggest transatlantic passage. This
piece also includes two monitors
installed flush with the wall. Like the
photographic mementos in Seven
Powers, the images on the monitors
record and commemorate the
descendants of those displaced by
slavery.
| | Description Source: | "Trace, 1st Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art", Festival catalogue | | Description Source Date: | 1999 | | Gender: | male | | Type: | person |
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