[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] Jeanne Mercier (Artwork Basel) writes, “Exhibited in Bamako and Miami, the Cuban artist’s work sheds gentle on narratives of id and resilience.”
‘I’m a storyteller – all my work is about telling tales,’ says the artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons, describing her multifaceted physique of labor. ‘After a number of a long time of inventive follow, I can now see the thread, the hyperlink, the continuity that runs via all my work: the exploration of historical past and reminiscence and their roles within the formation of id.’
Born in La Vega, Cuba, in 1959, María Magdalena Campos-Pons now lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Ranging from her private and household historical past, she reimagines the good dominant narratives of Western historical past – corresponding to these linked to slavery and monotheistic religions – to be able to create a hybrid cosmogony combining various traditions and rituals. Her sculptures, images, and efficiency items weave connections between questions of gender and sexuality, her multicultural id (Cuban, Chinese language, and Nigerian), spirituality, in addition to, within the artist’s phrases, the intersection of ‘unstated narratives’ and ‘resilient cultures.’ The ocean and the colour blue are central to a lot of her works, evoking directly the trauma of the slave commerce, exile, and the Yoruba faith.
Because the late Eighties, her work have attracted worldwide consideration. Her work has been exhibited all through the world: at documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens, the Museum of Trendy Artwork in New York, the Venice Biennale, and the Dakar Biennale. It’s at the moment included in ‘Within the Thoughts’s Eye: Landscapes of Cuba’ on the Patricia & Phillip Frost Artwork Museum in Miami, and can quickly be on view within the upcoming Sharjah Biennial.
This December, her first giant retrospective shall be staged as a part of the thirteenth Rencontres de Bamako: Biennale africaine de la photographie which this yr is entitled ‘Maa ka Maaya ka ca a yere kono’ (The Individuals of the Particular person Are A number of within the Particular person). This solo exhibition, curated by Dr Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and his crew, will present a choice of photographic works from 1994 to 2019: huge tableaux created by bringing collectively quite a few Polaroids in polyptychs organized in grids. Every composite picture tells a particular story via extremely elaborate mise-en-scènes combining set up and efficiency artwork, portray, and sculpture. This fragmentation shatters linear and spatial chronologies, restoring the truth of diasporic narratives and identities.
On the Rencontres in Bamako, viewers will uncover works that evoke tales concerning the transatlantic slave commerce, indigo and sugar plantations, non secular practices, and revolutionary uprisings, together with After I’m Not Right here/Estoy Allá (1997), Abridor de Caminos (Pathfinder) (1997), Nesting (2000), Dreaming of an Island (2008), and Replenishing (2001). This final piece options seven large-format Polaroids, like a contemporary altarpiece, and depicts the artist and her mom trying straight forward like statues or goddesses. When the picture was shot, the 2 girls had not seen one another since 1991, the yr when the daughter left for the US. Each maintain multicolored strings of pearls, whose colours every correspond to a definite Yoruba divinity. The sunshine-blue pearls within the mom’s palms symbolize Yemayá, the mild and fierce goddess of the ocean. Wearing flowing white clothes like these of a Santería provoke, Campos-Pons herself holds gold and amber pearls speckled with crimson which can be related to Oshun, goddess of fertility and sexuality.
On the middle of the picture, the 2 necklaces are knotted collectively, bodily and metaphorically linking two generations despite exile. This highly effective double portrait epitomizes Campos-Pons’s work: telling tales concerning the connections that survive past the bounds of the ocean, the physique, historical past.
For the total article and beautiful paintings, seehttps://www.artbasel.com/tales/maria-magdalena-campos-pons-unspoken-stories