Constellation

María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Constellation, 2004, instant color prints, each print: 24 x 20 in. (61.0 x 50.8 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 2013.23A-P, © 2004, María Magdalena Campos-Pons

Artwork Details

Title: Constellation
Artist: María Magdalena Campos-Pons
Date: 2004
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: each print: 24 x 20 in. (61.0 x 50.8 cm)
Copyright: © 2004, María Magdalena Campos-Pons
Credit Line: Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment
Mediums Description: instant color prints
Classifications: Photography
Highlights: Latinx Art
Photography
Object Number: 2013.23A-P
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/2013.23A-P

Artwork Description

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.

Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art, 2013

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.

Nuestra América: la presencia latina en el arte estadounidense, 2013

Works by this artist (15 items)

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Carl Walters

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Eugenie Gershoy

Date1935

bronze

Ill-Fated Toreador

Artist

Eugenie Gershoy

Dateca. 1935-1939

polychromed dextrine on wood

Arnold Blanch

Artist

Eugenie Gershoy

Date1934

bronze

Raphael Soyer

Artist

Eugenie Gershoy

Dateca. 1967-1970

bronze

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Our America Audio Podcast - E. Carmen Ramos: "Constellation" by Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons
Latino Artists on Race, Representation, and African Diasporic Culture Discussion

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.

Related Books

Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art

Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art explores how Latino artists shaped the artistic movements of their day and recalibrated key themes in American art and culture. This beautifully illustrated volume presents the rich and varied contributions of Latino artists in the United States since the mid-twentieth century, when the concept of a collective Latino identity began to emerge. Our America includes works by artists who participated in all the various artistic styles and movements, including abstract expressionism; activist, conceptual, and performance art; and classic American genres such as landscape, portraiture, and scenes of everyday life.

Exhibitions

Media - 2011.12 - SAAM-2011.12_1 - 77591

Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art

October 25, 2013–March 2, 2014

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art presents the rich and varied contributions of Latino artists in the United States since the mid-twentieth century, when the concept of a collective Latino identity began to emerge.