This essay covers works from her mid-1990s,
series called When I Am Not Here/Estoy Alla (1994-1997). It
consists of 20x24 Polaroid photographs. These performance-based photographs
show the artist's own body as the primary subject. She draws upon
memory and Afro-Cuban religious iconography and ritual to illustrate
her experiences of migration and longing. Through her performance-based
photographs Campos-Pons combines the past and the present, invoking
the archive and the repertoire. Through Campos-Pons's work, we can envision
a new kind of archival repository and further our understandings of
what constitutes history.
click
here to read the pdf version of the essay which appeared in the
Gallery Diet,
June 2007
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María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Everything is Separated by Water, is Campos-Pons's first large-scale survey. It premiered in 2007, at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, under the curatorial guidance of Lisa Freiman, and will travel to other museums including the Bass Museum in Miami Beach, FL. The exhibit features 34 paintings, sculptures, new media installations and large-format Polaroid photographs which were all produced after the Afro-Cuban artist left Cuba in 1990. The title, which was borrowed from one of her sculptural works, alludes to the physical, geographical and emotional barriers encountered in diasporic experiences.
