Review
Review of Secrets of the Magnolia Tree 2021. By Sally Ferguson
Mixed media, watercolour, photographs ( large format polaroids).
Maria Magdalena CAMPOS-PONS
Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York. Visited November 2023
The eyes of the woman owl grip you and draw you in. Seven feet of this person sitting in an owl cloak of feathers with kinky grey hair sprouting up from her forehead, slanted eyebrows, with her hands cupping her chin. The eyes are larger than human and their regard is dominant and yet quizzical ( asking you about yourself). Owls are known as a symbol of wisdom. This is the mature knowledgeable artist- looking at me. What now…. What now, with your years of experience and what you have seen?
Campos-Pons is sitting in her feathered cloak. Each feather is drawn/painted in fine detail and the picture is huge - there must be 350 feathers. The feathers are individually painted, and together, they enable flight. This cloak is warm yet light . Owls are observers in the forest. If you have had the pleasure of an owl fly next to you it is soft and silent. The feeling one has is awe, and as if a blessing has flown past. One evening back in Cuba, when the artist was about 8 years old, she was visited by an owl. She was in her bed, and saw it perched on the sill of the half-open window, observing her.
Her tunic is fringed, and there are cutouts in the skirt, also fringed. We can see the handmade running stitches. Is this a native tunic and skirt, is it chamois? Campos-Pons is professor of Art in Nashville, Tennessee- this may be respect for the original inhabitants of her adopted home. There are no Native Indian reservations in Tennessee; the last of the 7 tribes, the Cherokee were moved out of the state -onto concentrations camps and then moved West - the Trail of Tears.
The Owl woman has skinny and strong legs ( painted over the skirt in watercolour/gouache), down to ankles and feet. Painted over the toes are dark talons- the claws of a bird of prey. This bird is not a victim.
On either side are magnolias. Photographs and watercolours. Campos-Pons has used large scale polaroid photos since 1991. The magnolia is a native tree to the southern United States. It is used in traditional medicine. The flowers have broad creamy flowers with big petals, the big leaves are dark green. In an interview with Oluremi Onabanjo she describes walking through the botanical garden to work.
Compos-Pons has herself as an owl in a tryptich of polaroids with her in the centre in 2000 (see document 14, the poem: nesting the owl ) That imagery was in reds, this self portrait is in more neutral colours with soothing green leaves- is she mellowing with age? I identify with the owl woman - observing from the cool of her later years, her maturity.
In this exhibition at the Brooklyn one walks through the irons and ironing boards of the collective female past of women who worked as housekeepers. “Spoken Softly with Mama” 1998 There are huge segmented paintings (28 polaroids) with inspiration from some of her Chinese ancestry, used in the 2015 Venice Biennale. There are seascapes and herself as a fisherwoman and a huge Murano glass “She always knew of the space in-between”. There is wonderful portrait of her and her mother holding a string of beads in-between them “Replenishing”- this relates to her first reunion with her mother in Cuba after a long separation 2001. There is her in a cage of coloured string with her face painted white “Freedom Trap” 2013.
Biography:
Campos-Pons was born in 1959 in La Vega, Cuba and grew up on a sugar plantation in the Matanzas province; her family has Nigerian, Hispanic, and Chinese roots. The revolution of Fidel Castro opened the doors of art schools to all - as it opened healthcare and education generally. She went to the National School of Art, La Havana, Cuba. She was a pioneer of the New Cuban Art Movement that opposed Communist repression in Cuba during the late 1980s. Campos-Pons immigrated to the United States in 1991 and joined the Vanderbilt faculty in 2017.
Maria Magdalena is the Professor of Fine Arts Cornelius Vanderbilt Endowed Chair of Fine Arts Drawing, Performance, Installation at Vanderbilt University, Nashville.
References.
1.The Cuban artist discusses her self-portrait, Secrets of the Magnolia Tree, and other works.Oct 24, 2022 https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/789
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