![]() Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons Shooting Stars for the Falling Soldiers And this is not only restricted to the American South or the Global South, this is something you can find everywhere - in Tennessee, in Cuba, in Senegal, in the Bronx - people who maintain tradition, resilience and possibility in places in which the circumstances are difficult. We keep dreaming and producing - and we bring in an incredible amount of surprise to the human experience to overcome the complexity of life. One of the aspirations of that program is to create a network of creative thinkers to build a more equal landscape for art - how it is acquired, collected, cared for - and who has access to what.Īre there similarities in the lives of people in the American South, where you now live, and Global South, where you are from? I started a program at Vanderbilt University called Engine for Art, Democracy and Justice. I would do a lot of good deeds in relation to my body of work. What are you going to do with the prize money? ![]() Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons says this work, with its depiction of the "arresting beauty of the ocean" speaks to the "tragedy of Cuban family separations after the revolution" and "other migrations of Black and Brown people." Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons Esa Palabra Mar and this Word Waiting. ![]() I was running room to room in the house, feeling a sense of terror and elation. How did you react when you first found out that you won the MacArthur Fellowship? In the performance art piece Habla Lamadre, she sways through the Guggenheim Museum in New York City in a sculptural white dress while invoking Yemaya, an African deity, to "take hold of this institution and show the power of the Black body."Ĭampos-Pons, currently the Cornelius Vanderbilt Endowed Chair of Fine Arts at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., talks to NPR about what she plans to do with her prize money and what she thinks about being called a "genius." This interview has been edited for length and clarity.Ĭongratulations. She says the work is conveys "the abandonment of the female body" and "the complexities of geography." Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons After Duchamp uses photographic images to create a "visitation" of the French artist Marcel Duchamp, says Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons. Despite slavery, geography and the passage of time, these cultures are intertwined, and she feels very much connected to them. They represent the many cultures that make up the African diaspora. In one work, Constellation, Campos-Pons groups together 16 giant Polaroid photos of her dreadlocked hair and painted landscapes. Much of Campos-Pons' art draws inspiration from her upbringing in La Vega, where her family lived in former slave barracks and taught her the traditions, rituals and beliefs of her ancestors, Nigerian slaves brought to Cuba to work in the sugar plantation. That's how María Magdalena Campos-Pons, who grew up on a sugar plantation in Cuba, reacted to the news that she is one of this year's 20 MacArthur Fellows – known as the "Genius Grant." The MacArthur Foundation calls it a "no-strings attached award" of $800,000 given to "extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential." Campos-Pons, 64, received this honor for her work as a multidisciplinary artist whose sculptures, paintings, installations, photography and more are displayed in over 30 museums around the globe. ![]() So now I am going back to La Vega - as a MacArthur Genius." And I knew that I never was going to return to the town until I had a lot of good news to share. All I had was my luggage and a little piece of brown paper that had the address of where I was going. "When I left the town of La Vega to go to art school, I was wearing pants and a top that my mother made me using the fabric from a used mattress cover.
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