Smith College Museum of Art Hosts Afro-Cuban Artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons
For Two-day Residency Nov. 11-12, 2010
Northampton, MA October 28, 2010 -- The Smith College Museum of Art is pleased to announce a
two-day artist residency on November 11 and 12 by the Afro-Cuban artist, Maria Magdalena
Campos-Pons, whose work is featured in the current special exhibition, Sugar. Campos-Pons is a
renowned contemporary artist whose work focuses on her personal stories and family history and
heritage. She works with a wide range of materials and media including glass, metal, wood, video,
and – in her newest piece, entitled Sugar/Bittersweet, which is the centerpiece of the new exhibition
at SCMA, she has also used raw sugar in the form of discs, balls, and videos of sugar. Campos-Pons
also explores her themes through live performance art.
Two-Day Artist Residency by Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons: Public Programs
The general public is invited to participate in the following free programs offered by SCMA in
conjunction with the special exhibition, Sugar: Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons. For program updates
and details visit www.smith.edu/artmuseum.
Thursday, November 11-- Campos-Pons will present a lecture entitled The Making of Sugar/Bittersweet,
which will address the process of creating the new site-specific installation currently featured in the
Sugar exhibition. The lecture will also explore the installation within the larger context of the artist’s
work and career. No reservation necessary. Open to all. (5pm; Weinstein Auditorium, Wright Hall,
at Smith College)
Friday, November 12 -- Free Second Friday at SCMA. Museum open 10 a.m.to 8 p.m.; free
admission from 4 to 8 p.m. Featured event at 6 p.m. in Museum Atrium: a live performance by
Campos-Pons entitled, “They told me that … “ The work will explore the history of sugar
production and trade. Also: family-oriented gallery activity (ages 4+ with adult), 4 to 6 p.m. Plus:
informal reception featuring Afro-Cuban food in the Museum Atrium from 4 to 5:30. No
reservation necessary. Free and open to all.
Thursday, December 2, -- Film showing: Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North (2008,
documentary) will be screened; following by moderated discussion. 7–9 pm, in Stoddard
Auditorium. The screening will be followed by a moderated discussion. The film documents
filmmaker Katrina Browne’s discovery that her New England ancestors, the deWolfs, were the
largest slave-trading family in U.S. history. The film follows ten descendants as they retrace the steps
of the Triangle Trade. Back home, the family confronts the thorny topic of what to do now.
www.tracesofthetrade.org. )( 7 to 9 p.m.; Stoddard Auditorium, Smith College) No reservation
necessary. Free and open to all.
Sugar: Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons -- Overview by Linda Muehlig, Curator
The work of Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons addresses the Afro- Cuban diaspora and her identity as
a woman of Yoruba ancestry, born in a former slave barracks in the sugar plantation town la Vega in
the province of Matanzas, Cuba, and living and working in Boston. The exhibition Sugar: Maria
Magdalena Campos-Pons features a newly commissioned site-specific installation, Sugar/Bittersweet, with
two earlier installations by the artist related to her family’s ties to the sugar industry in Cuba. In
many ways, Campos-Pons’s personal history mirrors the so-called sugar triangle, a transatlantic trade
route involving European nations and the United States, particularly New England, in the infamous
exchange of slaves from Africa for sugar from the Caribbean. From South Pacific origins, spreading
from India and the Middle East to the Mediterranean and Africa, sugar cane crossed the ocean to
the New World in the late fifteenth century and became the agent of human dislocation and tragedy
on an epic scale. In the nineteenth century, Cuba’s slave- based plantation economy rose to become
a leading sugar producer worldwide.
Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons attended the Escuela Nacional de Arte and the Instituto Superior de
Arte before studies as an exchange student at the Massachusetts College of Art brought her to
North America in 1988. She has lived and worked in Boston since 1991. Her early work as a painter
in the 1980s focused on discussions of sexuality in Cuban mixed cultural heritage, as well as
women’s place in society and art history. She continues to explore her Afro-Cuban heritage in a
wide-ranging practice that includes multi-media installation art, photography, video, film, and
performance art.
In 1988 the artist began a collaboration with musician/composer (and husband) Neil Leonard,
which led to the founding of gASp, a lab and studio for the twenty-first century. Campos-Pons’s
work has been shown internationally since 1984, with solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern
Art (New York), the Venice Biennale, the Johannesburg Biennial, the First Liverpool Biennial, the
Dak’Art Biennial, and the Guangzhou Triennial, among other prestigious venues. In 2007 the
Indianapolis Museum of Art presented the first major retrospective of Campos-Pons’s work,
Everything is Separated by Water.
For updated information about Smith College Museum of Art and its exhibitions, programs, and
amenities, visit smith.edu/artmuseum.
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