María Magdalena Campos-Pons’s Constellation

Meet the Artists of Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art

Media - 2013.23A-P - SAAM-2013.23A-P_1 - 85107 — María Magdalena Campos-Pons, *Constellation,* 2004, instant color prints, Smithsonian American Art Museum

About this Artwork

Campos-Pons’s braided and dreadlocked hair, which meanders across the multipaneled composition, takes the shape of a spiral constellation, or a nest, the temporary home of migrating birds. She created this work, which merges elements of photography, painting, and performance, to explore the parallels between her migration from Cuba and the displacement of Africans during slavery. Each photograph can be read as a dreamy landscape or a lyrical trace of diasporic memories.

Acerca de esta obra

El cabello de Campos-Pons, peinado con trenzas y rastas, va ondulándose a través de la composición de varios paneles hasta tomar la forma espiralada de una constelación, o de un nido, el hogar temporal de las aves migratorias. En esta obra, la artista fusiona elementos de fotografía, pintura y performance, para explorar los paralelismos entre su inmigración desde Cuba y el desplazamiento de africanos en la época de la esclavitud. Cada fotografía puede interpretarse como un paisaje onírico o una huella lírica de recuerdos diaspóricos.

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This audio podcast series discusses artworks and themes in the exhibition Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In this episode, curator E. Carmen Ramos discusses Constellation by María Magdalena Campos-Pons.

E. CARMEN RAMOS: I’m E. Carmen Ramos, Curator for Latino Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and I’m also the curator of “Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art.” I wanted to talk about María Magdalena Campos-Pons’ large-scale installation that’s titled “Constellation.” Campos-Pons is a multimedia artist that has often worked with Polaroid photography.

We associate Polaroid with the kinds of cameras that were popular in the 1970s and ‘80s that created instant prints that popped out of a Polaroid camera. The Polaroid company produced two very large-scale cameras that still exist and are used mostly by artists. These cameras can produce very large-scale photographs, like the sixteen prints that make up “Constellation.”

To create this work, Campos-Pons created painted environments and used scaffolding and worked with assistants that created an elaborate setup that allowed her to capture views of her head seen from above and fragments of her hair and extensions against these beautiful, painted, lavender and gray backdrops. The central four photographs capture her head, and surrounding pictures show fragments of her hair that meander across the photographs. She titled the work “Constellation,” as it can appear like a stellar constellation that, like her gridded installation, unites separate things to form a larger whole.

But her constellation is not formed by stars but by hair, specifically black, braided, and dreadlock hair, a bodily feature that is associated with African diaspora and African people. Campos-Pons immigrated to the United States from her native Cuba in the late 1980s, and her experience of living in another country with its own black community led her to view herself as tied to a global Africa diaspora. She increasingly became aware of African-American artists as well, especially photographers like Lorna Simpson and Carrie Mae Weems, who were forging new representations of the black body in the early 1990s. Like them, she, too, wanted to depict black culture in a less literal sort of way.

In this work, she offers a visual meditation on her connection and the connections that she feels with African culture despite the ruptures of slavery, time, and distance. African diasporic cultures, whether they exist in Cuba or the United States, are still connected to one another and to Africa. Like the panels in this composition, many are distinct, but they share commonalities that unites them. This work is also about Campos-Pons’ continuing ties to Cuba even though she no longer lives there, and it is often difficult for her to return, she still feels connected to her country of birth.

Latino Artists on Race, Representation, and African Diasporic Culture Discussion

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Artists María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz, and Freddy Rodriguez discuss the varied ways in which they engage Afro-Latino themes and issues in their work. Panelists will consider whether Latino artists bring a unique perspective to representing African diasporic people and culture in American art. Discussion is moderated by curator for Latino Art E. Carmen Ramos.

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