MarĂa Magdalena Campos-Pons Life Has Not Even Begun
MarĂa Magdalena Campos-Pons Life Has Not Even Begun Contents
Essays Life Has Not Even Begun Neysa Page-Lieberman Outward Gestures: New Work by Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons Amy Mooney Plates Acknowledgements
Life Has Not Even Begun María Magdalena Campos-Pons During a wide-ranging and provocative conversation at her studio in the summer of 2008, María Magdalena Campos-Pons revealed the subjects that are driving her current body of work: the magnificent, fleeting life of midnight-blooming flowers, the recollection of a mysterious cousin from Cuba, and Barack Obama’s bid for the U.S. Presidency. A peek into her wonderfully chaotic studio – packed with things like antique Chinese vases, watercolor sketches, mountains of books, dried flowers and family photographs – revealed that the media used by the artist to question, probe, and explore her interests are as limitless as her inexhaustible curiosity. This glimpse into the thought process and work environment of this preeminent artist, revealed that she is, in actuality, just getting started. Born in the Matanzas province of Cuba in 1959, the same year that Castro took power, Campos-Pons is one of the most influential artists to emerge from Post-Revolutionary Cuba. The artist has gained increasing notoriety and international acclaim since her initial training at the Escuela Nacional de Arte and the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana and her graduate studies at Massachusetts College of Art, and by 2007 had earned a full-scale retrospective of her work at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Living in Boston since 1991 where she teaches at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Campos-Pons builds upon her diverse range of media including photography, performance, multimedia installation, painting and sculpture. The exhibition Life Has Not Even Begun presents several large-scale bodies of work produced within the past year. All but one of the pieces is shown for the first time in this exhibition, and the remaining piece, China Porcelain: My Mother Told Me I Am Chinese, is shown for the first time in the United States.1 The title is inspired by the artist’s boundless curiosity in all things she has yet to explore. Within this lies a deeper desire to reveal the unknown and challenge our own conceptions about our identity, history, politics, and the assumed natural order of things. The work in this exhibition forms three main areas of focus: Campos-Pons’ rediscovery of her Chinese heritage, the study of nature’s mysteries -
both literally and metaphorically, and the arc of war from the loss of life to the reclamation of peace. The most revelatory series of work in the exhibition includes China Porcelain: My Mother Told Me I Am Chinese, a multimedia installation and My Mother Told Me I Am Chinese: Painting Lesson, a multi-paneled Polaroid photograph. The two pieces delve into a lesser-known chapter of Cuba’s genealogical history. Although typically identified as Afro-Cuban, CamposPons has Chinese ancestry from her mother’s grandmother who came to Cuba with thousands of other Chinese contract workers in the mid-19th century. Working on tobacco and sugar cane fields alongside Africans, many of whom were still enslaved, there began an exchange of cultural material that has long enriched the cultural legacy of the island. Although Campos-Pons has been aware of her Chinese heritage since early childhood, she had been waiting for the right context to examine the subject; this finally occurred when she was invited to participate in the 2008 Guangzhou Triennial. In producing this work, the artist drew from her earliest memories to re-imagine and reconcile her family history. One such memory involves a visit with a cousin who had a physical likeness to her Chinese great-grandmother: I remember when I met this woman so vividly, even the details of her house and her clothes... I was sitting in a rocking chair and she was in the kitchen poaching an orange egg for me. I was crying because my mother wouldn’t let me wear her jewelry and ‘La China’ gave me the egg to make me feel better.2 Until recently she questioned the validity of this memory, but her mother and uncle confirmed that the cousin nicknamed “La China” was indeed real.3
The video performance that projects onto the installation of China Porcelain depicts the artist’s gradual transformation as she challenges her traditional identification with Africa. While facing herself in a mirror, Campos-Pons places an African Yoruba mask on her head and then removes it- uncovering one layer to reveal another. She then affirms her Chinese heritage by applying a new mask of face make-up in the traditional Chinese theatre style. Instead of mimicking the idealized “porcelain doll,” she applies broad strokes in a rhythmic fashion that echoes the heavy percussion of the audio track.4 The performance evokes an initiation, a sacred rite to honor the ancestral family from China. The paint dries uneven and messy, implying the inexactness of heritage. Even more than the texture of the drying paint, her choice of material further underscores her cultural hybridity. The paint is called cascarilla, a white pasty substance made from eggshells, and is used in the ceremonies and initiations of Santeria, an AfroCuban religion that combines African Yoruba and European Catholic spiritual practices.5 (Although Campos-Pons was not formally initiated into the Santeria religion, some of her relatives were practitioners and Santeria culture is pervasive throughout Cuba).6 While the choice of cascarilla paint refutes the perfection of the “porcelain doll,” it also references the use of white body paint in many African religions where sacred symbols are applied to the face, hands, feet or torso during ceremonies as body adornment, purification and communication with the ancestral world. In these works, Campos-Pons implies that identity is often confined by assumptions of history and heritage, but can be a fluid and ever-evolving re-imagining of self. Campos-Pons draws from over a century’s worth of intermingling between Chinese and African customs in Cuba, by including forty porcelain vessels in China Porcelain and incorporating traditional Chinese painting techniques in both the installation and the Painting Lesson photograph. The stacked porcelain vessels resemble pottery that was brought into Cuba during the first Chinese migration. Over time Santeria practitioners started using China porcelain bowls in their ceremonies to hold their “offerings” for ancestors and the orishas (Santeria deities). The artist handmade these vessels during her residency at Harvard in 2008. While there, she also learned to master a style and technique of 19th century Chinese painting, which dates close to the time her Chinese ancestor arrived in Cuba. Campos-Pons describes the style as employing very strict painting formulas that guide the depiction of subjects like birds, fish, trees, rocks, etc. The artist’s lessons are seen in the Painting Lesson photograph and on the vessels that make up the China Porcelain installation.7 The vessel imagery also depicts Campos-Pons’ imagined communities and landscapes of Pinar Del Rio, Cuba, the province where her great-grandmother arrived from China. Placed into these landscapes are Santeria orisha, like Shango, the warrior god, and Yemaja, the water spirit. On others, Campos-Pons
paints tobacco leaves that reference the grueling labor on tobacco fields, and a steam train that went through Pinar Del Rio which alludes to the journeys of the laborers.8 The porcelain vessels sit within stacked glass cases, altogether providing a “screen” for the projected video. The choice of glass speaks to Campos-Pons’ adherence to transparency and visibility, and that through the multiple layers of imagery, iconography, material and design, the unfolding narrative is being slowly unveiled, chapter by chapter.9 The sculptural installation Remembrance Fields documents Campos-Pons’ enduring interest in our natural surroundings and how natural elements often serve as one’s ties to land and home. The glass-cast blossoms depict different stages of life and death as seen through the brief flowering stage of Midnight Blooming plants. Since 2004, the artist has been documenting and collecting blossoms in her home, going so far as to stay up all night capturing videos and photographs as the magnificent blooms rise and fall in the darkness. The first bloom did not occur until Campos-Pons had the plant for 11 years, but the first bloom coincided with an eclipse that had not occurred since the late 1800's, which deeply intrigued the artist.10 This underscores the artist’s fascination with finding meaning in seemingly disparate things that seem mysteriously interconnected. The installation presents three stages of the nocturnal blooming period of the flowers, which only lasts a couple of hours, beginning in a long, thin pistil shape, then expanding into full and luxurious petals, and finally collapsing into a limp version of its former self. Campos-Pons has a deep reverence for these plants, due to their fleeting, fragile beauty, their endurance, and the mystery they conjure with their secret blooms. But like so much of Campos-Pons’ work, the exquisite surface is only the first layer in a complexly woven narrative. The title Remembrance Fields is decidedly political- alluding to war, loss of life, tragedy, suffering and the fragility of life. The dried blooms that served as models in Remembrance Fields find new life as the bouquets used in the still life photographs, Shooting Star for a Fallen Soldier and Mourning Bouquet. The format of these images recalls the classic vanitas genre - a style of painting which dates back to 16th century Europe - where morbid imagery like skulls, decomposing fruit, and objects teetering on table edges force onlookers to face death and embrace the fleeting nature of life. Campos-Pons’ vanitas message is more precise, referring to the great loss of life during the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The subtle tones and blurred images function as anonymous portraits, becoming strangely personal with familiar images and objects emerging. The “shooting stars” soaring through the backdrop deepen the idea of individual stories, human potential and the almost unimaginable loss of those who suffer unseen. In a time when the world speaks of “war exhaustion,” Campos-Pons offers this moving and delicate gesture.
Following the sobering still life photos is the exuberant Prayer for Obama series - work that encourages the renewal of hope and reconciliation. In the seven-paneled piece, the images reflect Campos-Pons’ deepening integration of performance in her work. Time-based performance is vital to this series as the artist shot the images on the morning of November 4, 2007, Election Day.11 Campos-Pons’ pointed movements recall the rhythmic, African derived performances and religious rites of Santeria ceremonies that she enacts on behalf of the hopeful candidate. For Campos-Pons, Santeria is the expression and legacy of Cuba’s most oppressed people, and in this context symbolizes a nation’s responsibility to make atonement with those who have suffered most. Her powerful poses and striking movements show strength, assuredness and unity, which she offers up to fortify the new president, and by extension, to an increasingly interconnected global community. In a playful fashion, Campos-Pons anchors the seven images around a tiny finger-puppet of Obama, given to her as a good luck gesture by a friend. She gently cradles the figure in the palms of her hands, wrapping it in purifying garlic skin, slightly bowing her head, and even adding cascarilla sacred markings to its face. Her bounty of braids figures prominently in this work, and may symbolize the connecting threads that bind people together.
The exhibition Life Has Not Even Begun seeks to capture the anticipation and tension inherent in exploring the unknown. It also suggests that Campos-Pons’ process of collecting, interpreting and reconfiguring disparate ideas and memories inspires an ever-evolving oeuvre and enthusiasm for grappling with uncertainty. As each piece reveals a distinct layer of meaning, the innate interrelation conveys a central meaning that exists at the core of Campos-Pons’ work. Beginning with the deconstruction and reassembling of personal and national identity; followed by the re-envisioning of loss, suffering and the fragility of life; and concluding with the reclamation of strength and peace, María Magdalena Campos-Pons introduces yet another new chapter in her artistic narrative leaving us in awe, eager to see what awaits us on the next page.
Neysa Page-Lieberman Curator and Director of the Department of Exhibition and Performance Spaces
The music, composed by Neil Leonard, Campos-Pons' husband and collaborator, alludes to the idea of metamorphosis and combines sounds of Santeria, domestic labor, Chinese ritual music and church bells. It also suggests links between the Santeria female deities and the Campos-Pons family. Email from Leonard 1/7/09.
I would like to thank Magdalena Campos-Pons, Camille Morgan, Stuart Carden, Amy Mooney and Jeff Nigro for the contributions to this essay and catalogue. I also extend my gratitude to Ronda Dibbern and Mark Porter for their support in developing the exhibition.
4
The installation of China Porcelain shown at Columbia College differs slightly from the original installation that premiered in China in 2008 (pictured in this catalogue). For Life Has Not Even Begun, the artist handmade the pottery in Boston, while the original version used vessels that were produced in China, following the artist’s specifications.
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Phone conversation with Campos-Pons, 11/14/08
Phone conversation with Campos-Pons, 10/16/08
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Phone conversation with Campos-Pons, 12/13/08
1
2
In Amy Mooney’s essay, “Outward Gestures,” she discusses Campos-Pons’ vital relationship with her mother and how her work becomes a vehicle for transmitting the stories of women in her family.
3
Joseph Murphy, Santeria: An African Religion in America. Beacon Press, 1988: 80 Lisa Freiman, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons: Everything is Separated by Water. Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2007: 30
6
Campos-Pons, presentation for Tate Modern’s symposium, “Why Sculpture, Why Here?” October 5, 2007.
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Conversation with Campos-Pons, 8/1/08
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Phone conversation with Campos-Pons, 12/13/08
Outward Gestures: New Work by María Magdalena Campos-Pons If, then, the artist fails to understand the inner law and catch the outward gestures of the delicate complexities of hills and streams and human figures … it is because he has not grasped the underlying principle of the one-stroke.1 When contemplating the artist’s process, seventeenthcentury Chinese philosopher/painter Shih-t’ao spoke of being deeply connected to one’s surroundings, so much so that with a single, outward gesture the artist can make visible the inner nature of all. The artist can connect exotic midnight blooming flowers with the death of soldiers in Iraq. She can employ the ridiculous to access the optimism of the Obama presidency, and she can juxtapose the seemingly disparate cultural traditions of Cuba, China, and Nigeria to reveal the complex and contingent nature of identity. Though the multi-media installations of María Magdalena Campos-Pons may require more than one literal stroke, the metaphor is apt for this emerging body of work. The works created for this exhibition, Life Has Not Even Begun, continue the artist’s discourse on the African diaspora, the experience of memory, and the conceptualization of beauty. Though these themes still guide her work, as curator Neysa Page-Lieberman notes in her catalog essay, the trajectory shifts to accommodate new gestures and genres of communication. In China Porcelain: My Mother Told Me I Am Chinese and My Mother Told Me I Am Chinese: Painting Lesson, the artist invites the viewer to consider the contingencies of identity. Through the titles of both works, Campos-Pons offers a seemingly simple affirmation of identity offered by her mother and, initially, accepted by the artist as fact. Yet, for Campos-Pons, the declarative rests upon the conditional. As in previous work, the artist employs language judiciously, selecting words that situate the viewer within the context of a reflective moment, where she is questioning what it means to be Chinese. Campos-Pons evokes the authoritative voice of the mother, reminding viewers of the pivotal role matrilineal lore can play in identity formation.
According to the artist, we look to our mothers to collect, store, and dispense our histories.2 Their memories, as fragmented and flawed as they may be, become our own. Looking at her child, a mother may comment on a resemblance to distant relative, thus forging a tenuous connection to photographs that will be scrutinized later. Many times, these observations are made in an offhanded manner, yet despite the casual delivery, they remain defining moments. The artist first explored the tensions generated by this awesome power in Softly Spoken with Mama (1997). In this multimedia installation, an intimate exchange between mother and daughter illustrates how history and tradition are passed from generation to generation, and how collective memory is preserved in everyday objects. Several generations of mothers’ presence is recorded through the accumulation of their labors. In this work, the women of the Campos-Pons family tell their stories through recordings, projections, and domestic objects such as irons, trivets, ironing boards, and stacks of linen. Transformed from their original functional materials into glass art objects, the irons and trivets are luminous with the accumulated energy of the women who handled their surfaces, supporting their families as laundresses and seamstresses. The piece has a commemorative and heroic function. We bear witness to the histories of mothers. In China Porcelain: My Mother Told Me I Am Chinese, however, the power of the mother is both honored and disrupted. As indicated by the title, the work is generated by the words of the mother, yet her presence is not visualized. Instead, the artist presents herself as subject, turning the inward exercise of self-awareness into a series of outward gestures of cultural dispersal. With the exception of the collaborative soundtrack by composer Neil Leonard, Campos-Pons controls every element of performance, from the lighting to the props, consciously considering the individual properties
of each, as well as the meanings generated through their juxtaposition and layering. As such, her work is challenging and requires a close read to access the cultural associations and mixed metaphors.
by their translocation from the cultures and contexts of their provenance.”6 As a whole, the piece requires the sort of contemplation characteristic of a Taoist painting; understanding arrives with receptiveness.
The video performance begins with a shot of the artist dressed in a saffron colored Manchurian styled tunic. She is seated before a mirrored black lacquer screen, looking at herself. Campos-Pons places a Gelede mask on her head and then removes it. An annual Yoruba masquerade that honors the transformative power of mothers, the àjè, Gelede functions as a means of maintaining harmony in gender relations.3 The “virtues of social living and good citizenship” are among the messages communicated through the iconography of the mask, underscoring the women’s social and didactic role.4 Though Gelede intends to honor women, the masqueraders are always male. The costumes and performance reference the dualistic nature of the world. The snakes and leopard depicted on top of the Gelede mask could challenge each other’s authority, instead, they combine forces to counteract darkness, a parable the artist finds relevant for today.5 When Campos-Pons assumes the mask, she engages dialectical qualities most associated with her work: that of the Afro-Cuban diaspora.
In My Mother Told Me I Am Chinese: Painting Lesson, the artist merges ancient traditions of Chinese landscape painting with her own photographic practice. As in the previous work, the piece is ostensibly a self-portrait that explores identity through carefully selected iconography.7 Campos-Pons stands in the center in the same costume and face paint as seen in the video. Her eyes are closed and she holds a porcelain ginger jar decorated in the famille noire style. For the artist, famille noire serves as a double entendre, referencing a racial categorization (literally, “black family”) as well as the classification for Chinese porcelains with a predominantly black ground that were made during the Kangxi reign (1662–1722).8 Behind her is an antique lacquer screen that she purchased in Boston for its aesthetic and symbolic properties. The dynamic triangular pattern of the lattice panels seems simultaneously ancient and modern. The contrast of the red and black lacquer could refer to the dualistic principles of yin and yang, as well as referencing the color symbolism of the Santería orisha, Eleggua, the guardian of the crossroads of life. The central panel of the screen is mirrored and when the artist positions herself in front of it, she seems to exist in multiple realms simultaneously. Throughout the twentyone panels that compose the piece, the English words and Chinese characters for “My Mother, “ “Told Me,” “I am Chinese” are integrated into scenes that mimic the angular patterns of the lattice and depict elements of the natural environment. Each fragment connects to the whole, one stroke delivering the entanglements of cultural and temporal dispersal that constitute the modern self.
Significantly, this moment serves as a multivalent portrait, in which the viewer sees the artist as she sees herself. As she removes the mask and begins the application of white face paint, the artist unhinges fixed notions of identity, performing the fluidity demanded by post-colonial displacement. The unmasking and masking serve as a means of irruption—breaking with the potency of an idealized and exoticized “other.” Neysa Page-Lieberman notes that Campos-Pons deliberately chooses not to become the ideal Chinese “porcelain doll,” applying the white mask so that her marks and own skin remains visible. She references the Chinese tradition, synthesizing it with those of Santería and Gelede. Yet it is apparent that these elements are only part of the whole self that is presented within the installation. Given that Campos-Pons first conceived of this performance for the Guangzhou Triennial, she wanted to explore the complicated connotations of post-colonialism and how diffusionist theories of assimilation, acculturation, and/or creolization impact individual identities. The appropriation practiced by CamposPons is characteristic of “global conceptualists” and results in objects that are “radically thrown into oscillation
I would like to thank Magdalena Campos-Pons, Joan Giroux, and Neysa Page-Lieberman for their contributions to this essay. Shih-t’ao, “Quotes on Painting,” Aesthetics: The Classic Readings, David E. Cooper, ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 1997: 66.
1
Phone conversation with Campos-Pons 1/1/09.
2
Babatunde Lawal, The Gelede Spectacle: Art, Gender, and Social Harmony in an African Culture. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996.
3
Ibid., xiv.
4
Ibid., 203.
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Through this new body of work, María Magdalena CamposPons continues to explore the fullness of humanity by looking inward while simultaneously extending the outward gesture. It is a generous act with generative potential that models how we might reconcile the tensions of global dispersal within our individual selves. These pieces demonstrate how within the one, we are many. Amy M. Mooney, Ph.D. A + D Faculty, Columbia College Chicago
Salah Hassan and Olu Oguibe, “’Authentic/ex-centric’ at the Venice Biennale: African Conceptualism in Global Contexts,” African Arts, vol. 34, issue 4: 73. Hassan and Oguibe note additional defining characteristics include self-reflexivity, dematerialization, and contextual framing, all concepts relevant to the work of Campos-Pons.
China Porcelain: My Mother Told Me I Am Chinese, 2008 Multimedia installation Photo by Davide Carlesso. Courtesy of Galleria Pack, Milan and Guangzhou Triennial.
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Again, I would like to express my thanks to the artist for sharing her reasons for selecting each element for this work during our interview on 1/1/09. It was an auspicious beginning for the new year.
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Jan-Erik Nilsson, “Famille noire,” 2008, http://gotheborg.com/index.htm
China Porcelain: My Mother Told Me I Am Chinese (detail), 2008 Multimedia installation Photo by Davide Carlesso. Courtesy of Galleria Pack, Milan and Guangzhou Triennial.
My Mother Told Me I Am Chinese: Painting Lesson (detail), 2008 21 Polaroid prints Photo by Clements/Howcroft. Courtesy of the artist and Bernice Steinbaum Gallery.
My Mother Told Me I Am Chinese: Painting Lesson, 2008 21 Polaroid prints Photo by Clements/Howcroft. Courtesy of the artist and Bernice Steinbaum Gallery.
Photograph of a midnight blooming flower, study for Remembrance Fields, 2008 Courtesy of the artist
Photograph of a midnight blooming flower, study for Remembrance Fields, 2008 Courtesy of the artist
Shooting Star for a Fallen Soldier, 2008 12 Polaroid prints Photo by Clements/Howcroft. Courtesy of the artist and Bernice Steinbaum Gallery.
Mourning Bouquet, 2008 4 Polaroid prints Photo by Clements/Howcroft. Courtesy of the artist and Bernice Steinbaum Gallery.
Prayer for Obama II, 2008 2 Polaroid prints Photo by Clements/Howcroft. Courtesy of the artist and Bernice Steinbaum Gallery.
Prayer for Obama I, 2008 7 Polaroid prints Photo by Clemens/Howcroft. Courtesy of the artist and Bernice Steinbaum Gallery.
Acknowledgements The Department of Exhibition and Performance Spaces thanks the Columbia College co-sponsors of Life Has Not Even Begun including: Student Affairs, Multicultural Affairs, Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media, the Department of Humanities, History, and Social Sciences, Art and Design, Portfolio Center, Critical Encounters, Center for Teaching Excellence, Creative and Printing Services, Institutional Advancement and the Office of the President. We also extend our gratitude to Amy Mooney, Ashley Woodworth, Bernice Steinbaum Gallery and Schneider Gallery. Finally, a gigantic and warm thank you to the gracious and extraordinary Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons for creating this stunning body of work for the Glass Curtain Gallery and for sharing her talents with Columbia students.
Glass Curtain Gallery Columbia College Chicago 1104 South Wabash Ave. Chicago, IL, 60605
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