Although she warns that she is tired, the moment Cuban multidisciplinary artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons (Matanzas, 65 years old) begins to speak, a whirlwind of energy is unleashed. With agility, she weaves a speech as passionate as it is captivating. She has just arrived in New York after a two-day trip to Cuba, because it was her mother’s 99th birthday. To celebrate, she went to Matanzas to have a conversation with the water spirits of the Caribbean and the air. Campos-Pons, professor of Fine Arts at Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tennessee), winner of the prestigious MacArthur scholarship last year and one of the leading figures of post-revolution Cuban art, believes in the world of the orishas and the spiritual is an integral part of her work.
Whether through performance, audiovisual or sculpture, her approach to the themes that interest her—racial history, multi-identity, feminism—always starts from a dimension that questions not only the human condition, but also the universe, with an increasingly strong claim to unity. Her work has been exhibited in some of the most emblematic galleries and art festivals in the world, including the MoMA, the Whitney, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Venice Biennale and the Brooklyn Museum, which last September dedicated a retrospective to her, Beholdcovering his work over the past forty years. An exhibition that can be seen from September 27 to January 5 at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, and subsequently at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
Approachable and vibrant, Magda, as her friends call her, speaks with delight about what she has prepared as a guest artist to culminate the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Program Public Art in Public Space organized by Madison Square Park in New York. “An honor,” he says before beginning to talk about the performance that will take place in two parts, this Saturday and Friday, September 20. The Procession of Angels for Radical Love and Unity It will consist of a multi-generational march through various symbolic sites in the Big Apple selected for their historical importance, which will be accompanied by poetry recitals and concerts.
Ask. Where did the idea of creating a Procession of Angels for Radical Love and Unity come from?
Answer. The idea was to create a performance that was consistent and had continuity with my performance practice. The first project I did focused on a procession was in 1986, when I had just graduated from art in Cuba. The processions are based on personal experiences I lived in the small town where I grew up, in La Vega, located in the province of Matanzas. They were a mix of African traditions with European celebrations, specifically Spanish, based on Catholicism. While we march in New York, on September 7th in Cuba the day of the goddess Yemayá is celebrated, mistress of the seven seas, protector of the home and fertility. And the next day the festival is celebrated in honor of the Virgin of Charity of Cobre and Oshun in the Yoruba religion. I participated in these processions as a child, when the entire town goes out to walk taking the virgin with them. And the celebration of Santeria where they introduce music, food… all the sensorial pleasures. I thought it would be interesting to have a procession here in New York, a city that is discovered by walking. Walking through New York is artistic material. And we are going through historical points that should not be forgotten. Like the place where the silent march took place on July 28, 1917 (along Fifth Avenue from 55th Street to 23rd Street) where 10,000 African Americans silently protested against lynchings and racial discrimination. Or the first orphanage created for African Americans, the Colored Orphan Asylum, which was burned on June 13, 1863. But my purpose is not to hammer on these issues, but to remember that we have evolved, that we are now in a different place.
P. At every stop there will be a poet. From Richard Blanco, who performed at Obama’s inaugural recital, to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Ada Ferrer, to Major Jackson and even a ten-year-old boy, Kayden Hern.
R. This procession is a great poetic act. Poems are messages that are left in the universe, that are in the air and that stay in our soul when we read them, walk or meet someone who passes by in the opposite direction and we have exchanges in that process. It is not a show. It is about achieving something extraordinary through everyday life. It is an invitation to love oneself and love others. This procession-performance is an invitation to rethink how we understand each other, how we find each other and perhaps to stop and look at each other again.
P. How else does the project connect with Cuban culture?
RI pay homage to the Cuban figures who have inspired me most in my personal life and in my work by bringing six large puppets to the procession. They represent the visual artists Ana Mendieta and Félix González Torres, the writers Reinaldo Arenas and José Martí, the singer Celia Cruz and the commissioner Juan Delgado Calzadilla.
P. Does it also have to do with emigration?
R. I once told someone, “I don’t want you to call me an immigrant anymore.” I’m not. I’m just another identity, another entity of the only home we have right now, which is planet Earth, and the only thing that separates us from each other is a few pieces of water. One of the things that interests me most as a thinker is to find out what distinguishes this era from the previous one, and that is the discourse of division. And yet, we have to be united to save the planet, to understand humanity. What makes me different? The more I travel, the more similarities I find. Maybe we eat one flour in Guatemala and a different pod somewhere else, but we eat. And we breathe the same air. And we are born with one breath and we die when we can’t breathe anymore. Who do you know who does something different? The project of making enemies is a way of controlling some for the benefit of others. If you put three people together who don’t
speak the same language, they will understand each other through gestures, they will help each other when they are desperate… They speak the language of the body, of the soul, of the human being. I know that it is a dangerous way of thinking for those who want us to think differently.
P. What do you want people to take away from this performance?
R. The desire to repeat it. To create many processions of angels for a radical love. It doesn’t matter if there are only two people walking, the important thing is to know that we are walking with the energy and potential of what we are going to find and what we already have.
P. And for you, what is radical love?
R. That’s what I want people to take away from the performance, a conversation where they ask themselves that question. What is radical love? That in daily routines like walking we have the possibility of encountering and exchanging energy. For me it’s the idea of loving the other and understanding them, and how to make space for that to happen.
María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Procession of Angels for Radical Love and Unity. Saturday, September 7 at 9am at Harlem Art Park (East 120th Street and Sylvan Place between Second and Third Avenues). Register here.
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