María Magdalena Campos Pons

Finding Balance, 28 Polaroid Prints, 2016

Campos Pons’ work is a deeply felt engagement with the history of migration. Working with large polaroids, the frayed edges of her work defy rigid borders and instead evoke the liminality of space.

Finding Balance, 28 Polaroid Prints, 2015 © María Magdalena Campos Pons

About

María Magdalena Campos Pons is an a Cuban born artist of Yoruba and Chinese descent. She is one of the most powerful artists to emerge from Cuba’s post-revolutionary period. In the piece Finding Balance, Campos Pons explores “an aspect of Caribbean identity that is often overlooked—the significant Asian presence and the legacy of Chinese labor and trade in the region.”¹ In her feminist artist statement she writes:

My work renders elements of personal history and persona that have universal relevance. I exploit a variety of photographic means, portraiture, landscape, and documentary photography. In an effort to create historical narratives that illuminate the spirit of people and places, past and present. My subjects are often my Afro-Cuban relatives as well as myself. My themes are cross cultural, and cross generational; race and gender expressed in symbols of matriarchy and maternity are thematic ideas. The salient tie to familiar and cultural history vastly expands for me the range of photographic possibilities.²

Campos Pons’ work is a deeply felt engagement with the history of migration. Working with large polaroids, the frayed edges of her work defy rigid borders and instead evoke the liminality of space.

From Serie Llego FeFa " The Messenger 1", 34.25 x 22 inches, 2012 © María Magdalena Campos Pons

Fragility, ephemerality, and a transient quality of time and place are visible components in my vocabulary, which I explore through video, film, photography, installation, and performance. I am compelled by the democratic process of art-making that challenges the participation, presence, and bodily immersion of the viewer.³

1. Elizabeth Ferrer, “Latinx Photography in the United States: A Visual History” 2021.

2. María Magdalena Campos Pons Artist Statement, Brooklyn Museum.

3. Bernice Steinbaum Gallery Statement by María Magdalena Campos Pons.