permanent collection

Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons
 

María Magdalena Campos-Pons, a woman, an expatriate, and a Cuban, makes art about identity and memory. Like all good art that begins in the personal, her work echoes the lives of all Black people rooted in Cuba, and of legions of fellow travelers from around the world at the turn of the 21st century. Born in Cuba of Nigerian ancestry, she has been living in Boston where she teaches at the School of the Museum of Fine Art. She settled there to tackle the themes of identity (female and racial), familial ties, and what it is like to live as one from somewhere else. There is a Polaroid suite from her series When I am not here/Estoy Alla that expresses the conflicted feelings that accompany her choices. In the left panel a woman cradles an armful of small boats. The right panel, a monochromatic field of blue, contains the shape of a house drawn with a ribbon.