October 14, 2011 – 6:00 pm | Performance
Performance by Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons
Auditorium
Free; seating is first come, first served
- María Magdalena Campos-Pons. Spoken Softly with Mama, 1998. Mixed-media installation of embroidered silk and organza over ironing boards with photographic transfers, embroidered cotton sheets, cast glass irons and trivets, wooden benches, six projected video tracks, and stereo sound; dimensions variable. Purchased 1999; National Gallery of Canada, no. 40059
María Magdalena Campos-Pons will debut an intimate performance art piece at the Frist Center in relation to her exhibition Journeys, on view in the Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery from October 7, 2011 to January 8, 2012.
Using her body, voice, and surrounding space, Campos-Pons will expand on the ideas about dislocation that she explores in the accompanying exhibition of her work, Journeys. The notion of journey refers to Campos-Pons’s own place within the African Diaspora: she is a woman of Nigerian ancestry, born and raised in the province of Matanzas, Cuba, who has lived in Boston since 1991.
The event will be performed in collaboration with her husband, American musician and composer Neil Leonard.
Campos-Pons creates photographs, video and multimedia installations that tell the story of the survival of African cultures by evoking rites, myths and narratives that have evolved through generations. Her work symbolically follows the history of the slave trade by drawing on her own family’s origin in Nigeria then to Cuba, where she was born and where her ancestors worked as slaves in the sugar industry, to present-day Boston, where Campos-Pons now teaches art.
Participate in the Performance
In addition to watching the performance, the artist invites and encourages you to participate in Journeys by 1) bringing to the performance your “reflections of good will” intended for the four directions (North, South, East, and West) of our planet; 2) writing and bringing short stories written in English or Spanish about the theme “journeys”; and/or 3) creating a small packet of essentials that you would take if you were going on a journey. If you choose to participate, interpret these instructions creatively and in the ways that makes the most sense to you, and bring your items in a transparent, Ziploc bag. Please note: items you bring will not be returned.
An artist reception in the Frist Center’s Grand Lobby will immediately follow the performance of Journeys.