November 12, 2002 – January 12, 2003
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 for the past twelve years where she teaches art at the Boston Museum School. She settled there, not because she wanted to leave Cuba, but because she married a Bostonian. She decided to stay, to make a marriage, to have children, to live as one from somewhere else. There was a Polaroid suite in the exhibition 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.
Installation Images
Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Seven Powers.
Installation view.
