“I am a gatherer, I am a conduit, I am a vessel”1, this is how María Magdalena Campos-Pons defines herself—in words. Yet words are unnecessary; we already know. It is evident the moment we stand before her work. In the boundless expanse of her creativity, we feel it: a presence both containing and emanating an utterly connection with all that exists, bridging us to the ancestral, the sacred, and the natural realms. Hence, from one piece to the other, across more than three decades, Campos-Pons portraits her Black female body as the perfect medium through which new ways of seeing, understanding and inhabiting the world emerge. A vessel of possibility. A keeper of memory. Nurturing hope.s.
In a world increasingly splintering into countless fragments, her work manifests the promise of an unbreakable communion. All we need is faith. In our bodies. In the universe. And everything is already within us, waiting to be unveiled. Feverishly, Campos-Pons urges us to unearth these fundamental truths. She then becomes the woman-tree, the woman-flower, the woman-leaf, the woman-ocean, the woman-earth, the woman who carries every light and all darkness, whole and infinite. A Black woman studying the world from an unreachable yet intimately close beyond. With eyes sometimes open, sometimes closed; ever vigilant, bearing the sorrow and love necessary to uphold the robust tradition of resistance passed down by our enslaved ancestors. Lest we forget: our breathing Black bodies are living monuments to the indomitable spirit of marronage—that vital legacy of those who fled bondage and reinvented themselves through self-emancipation. But marronage is more than fugitivity. Beyond escape, it is a transformative act of creation, of forging new life in the wilderness, of reclaiming sovereignty over the mind and spirit. These dimensions of marronage animate Campos-Pons’ work. By offering new perspectives on our existence and challenging hegemonic epistemology, the artist opens pathways to ultimate freedom and inspires the imagination of alternative ways of living.
It is from nature that Campos-Pons draws the most unexpected tools to deepen her scrutiny of the world: universal mysteries, human mysteries, her own. At times, she mimics the owl, a creature known for its ability to see in the dark, revealing what remains unseen with ordinary vision. In various cultures, this nocturnal bird symbolizes supreme wisdom. Whereas the ancient Greeks linked owls to the goddess Athena, in the Yoruba cosmogonies that gave birth to our Afro-Cuban worldview, they are regarded as divine beings, conveyers of protective wisdom and heighteneintuition, attributes of the goddess Oshún Ololodí. Thus, in works such as Nesting II. It is from nature that Campos-Pons draws the most unexpected tools to deepen her scrutiny of the world: universal mysteries, human mysteries, her own. At times, she mimics the owl, a creature known for its ability to see in the dark, revealing what remains unseen with ordinary vision. In various cultures, this nocturnal bird symbolizes supreme wisdom. Whereas the ancient Greeks linked owls to the goddess Athena, in the Yoruba cosmogonies that gave birth to our Afro-Cuban worldview, they are regarded as divine beings, conveyers of protective wisdom and heightened intuition, attributes of the goddess Oshún Ololodí. Thus, in works such as Nesting II,
The fusion with nature attains absolute completeness in the series Secrets of the Magnolia Tree. There, Magda’s feet are at once human, root, and hoof, burrowing into the earth as if the land itself were claiming her body. The owl’s piercing gaze merges seamlessly with her own, while her form dissolves into the bird’s body. Where does her skin end and the owl’s plumage begin? Is it her hair flowing around her head, or the magnolia branches unfurling into space? Mesmerizing metamorphosis, where the boundaries between human, animal, and plant vanish entirely. The artist began this series after relocating to Nashville in 2017. In her ongoing quest for spiritual and aesthetic harmony with her surroundings, she discovered that the emblematic trees of the Southern landscape provided a magnificent way to express both her innermost self and the persistent, underlying forces that shape the region’s history and present. The magnolia—with its glossy, leathery leaves and dramatic white blossoms—embodies a complex symbolism in the American South, evoking both beauty and the lingering legacy of the plantation system. Subtly yet powerfully, Campos-Pons wove the magnolia tree into her creative imaginarium, deepening the engagement with the afterlives of slavery that permeates her work.
Before these images, some may recoil in fear, seeking escape. Who is this floral woman—both human and tree, her body merging with an owl that stares at us from the untamed undergrowth? Her presence is overwhelming, her humanity pressing upon us with an intensity that, to some, may appear supernatural the more it entwines with nature. Monstrous? Magda’s gaze carries the certainty of a strong lineage rooted in Black maroon women who understood that the path to true emancipation can only be forged by their own hands. It is the path traced by the “demonic model” described by Afro-Caribbean philosopher Sylvia Wynter: the radical creation of “a new science of human discourse, of human ‘life’ beyond the ‘master discourse’ of our governing ‘privileged text,’ and its sub/versions.” 2 This is thus the artist’s main primary tool, enabling her to conjure versions of herself as an uncanny entity, observing us from beyond the reach of hegemonic epistemology. A body absolutely free and unintelligible, a body only Campos-Pons herself could ever explain. Still, she shows no interest in being deciphered, in rendering herself legible within any system of knowledge. In many of her works, she withholds even her face, refusing the gaze that seeks to impose meaning upon her. In “The Right Protection,” for instance, she turns her back to us. Painted across it, a sea of eyes stares outward—examining us, examining the world.
The maroon woman challenges conventional understanding, and it is this very unthinkability— attained by fully inhabiting the “demonic ground,”—that defines the distinctive nature of Black womanhood.3 Nikki Giovanni celebrates this unique process of self-definition, asserting that Black women are “the only group that derives its identity from itself.” The poet states: “We measure ourselves by ourselves, and I think that’s a practice we can ill afford to lose.” 4 Like Wynter and other visionaries, Giovanni has fought tirelessly for Black women to not only accept their supposed monstrosity but to embrace and harness it as a potent counter-hegemonic weapon. In doing so, what is often deemed monstrous transmutes into a new model of humanness, reimagined and claimed on our own terms.Ultimately, that’s what it all comes down to: inventing new worlds and finding new ways to exist within them. Afrofuturism, as many would call it. But what is Afrofuturism if not a journey to origins that already exist in the future? An endless movement through temporalities transcending hours, years, and centuries—blurring the space between reality and dreams, relentlessly dismantling maps and clocks. These unimaginable possibilities of being can only be accessed by maintaining a tranquil dialogue with nature. To do so requires stillness—a withdrawal from a world that constantly demands motion, labor, production, explanation. Magda remains immobile, eyes closed, listening to the whispers of the birds. Slowly, she journeys inward, caressing her most intricate depths. She becomes the trunk of a blossoming tree, pillar of wisdom.
Campos-Pons’ transmutation with nature reintegrates her into a world ruled by Orishas, the Yoruba deities of the Cuban Regla de Osha, or Santería, manifesting in everything around us: sunflowers of Oshun, goddess of the rivers, the sea waves where Yemaya dances through eternity, the azucenas (white lilies) of Obatala, the purifying god who fosters clarity and guides righteous discernment.
Undeniably, she is a gatherer—of beings from every corner of the planet, across cultures, beliefs, races, and genders. Yet, in the images she creates through painting, photography, and performance, such distinctions dissolve into nothingness. In her work, we all become entities, inhaling the same air, sharing existence not only with those physically present but also with the departed and the unborn. She is a conduit through whom universal energy flows, bridging her body and ours, her worlds and ours, her time and space with our own. A force both powerful and boundless, linking the human and the non-human, the natural and the spiritual realms. And a vessel, as through self-representation, she embodies the complex, carnal, and spiritual embrace of her ancestors; Africa, Europe, Asia, and Indigenous people converging within her Their presence lingers in the tactile materiality of her flesh and blood, in the infinite reach of her senses and her mind.
“Using steel, which seems very robust and almost indestructible, has its own limitation,” he adds. Owusu cuts the steel like he would a piece of paper. “I weave the steel and twist it and so that it becomes something very soft that appears not as solid and robust as we think it would be.”
In our Afro-Cuban cosmologies of Yoruba origin, we call this energy ashe. The ashe— or aṣẹ inYoruba—sustains universal harmony, turning chaos into cosmos. Even in the most hostile and unfamiliar environments, the slightest sign of life affirms the presence of ashe. For our African ancestors, feeling the ashe preserving the natural cycles of transformation, even as their worlds and lives were shattered by European enslavers, provided a spiritual lifeline. It helped them transcend the distances of time and space, holding onto their humanity despite absolute dispossession. Physically distant from Africa, they understood that as long as ashe flowed between people, nature, and all things, the connection to their homeland endured, linking them to the soil where their dead rested, providing existential sustenance even from afar.
Ashe played a crucial role in our ancestors' survival, making it possible for us to exist today as Afro-descendants. Campos-Pons knows this well. Born just months after the Cuban Revolution's victory in January 1959, she grew up in La Vega, a former sugar plantation in Matanzas, east of Havana. The legacy of her African ancestors, forcibly brought to the island, has never left her. Her childhood unfolded near cane fields nourished by the blood and sweat of her grandparents, beside the barracks where they once dared to dream of another life. She is the unforeseen manifestation of those dreams; her being serving as a living canvas of the textures, sounds, colors, smells, and flavors that shaped the existence of her dehumanized ancestors.
Sugar is a recurring motif in Campos-Pons’ work. Ubiquitous substance, whose sweetness sharply contrasts with the bitter realities of those who toiled in the cane fields, cutting, hauling, and dying for its harvest. As starkly white in its refined form as the skin of its most dehumanized producers was Black, sugar carries layered histories of dislocation, disempowerment, and the industrial commodification of human bodies. These complexities have inspired Campos-Pons’ installations, including 10 “Sugar/Bittersweet” (2010) and “Alchemy of the Soul, Elixir for the Spirits” (2016), where she explores sugar through historical, economic, cultural, and culinary lenses— tracing its trajectory from production to trade and consumption.
Campos-Pons moves, however, beyond the traumatic wounds of this uprooted past, transforming grief and nostalgia into poignant artistic expression. In her work, sugar becomes a versatile medium through which she interrogates the histories of displacement that have shaped her homeland. Both the catalyst and consequence of intense migratory flows and commercial exchanges, sugar bound distant corners of the world in a network of extractivism and forced labor. This violent global entanglement is embedded in the artist’s own body as she traces her African ancestry alongside her Chinese heritage—a legacy of the waves of Chinese indentured laborers brought to Cuba’s cane fields in the 19th century.
Migration, uprooting, and identity's fluid nature weave persistently through CamposPons' artistic tapestry, as reflections of her own journey. In 1980, she left Matanzas for Havana to study at the Instituto Superior de Arte, and in the 1990s, her pilgrimage continued to the United States. For twenty-five years, she taught at the prestigious School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston before assuming the Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair of Fine Arts at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Yet, through each displacement, ancestral connections remain unbroken; spirits of the past inhabit everything—trees, rivers, air, oceans, our very bodies. The endurance of African spirituality and knowledge through centuries of systematic oppression challenges the reductive colonial narrative that Black identity in the Americas begins merely with the Atlantic Slave Trade—a storyline that diminishes rich African existence to the moment of European intervention. This is why Campos-Pons' world belongs firmly within the realm of marronage: a space of resistance, autonomy, and self-determined Black being.
In "Red Composition," from the series The Path, Campos-Pons stands at the threshold of introspection, eyes and mouth sealed in self-contemplation, while Eleggua's distinctive red-and-black necklace maps secret pathways across her mind. This imagery is deeply significant: in Cuban Santería, Eleggua is the mercurial orisha who opens, closes, and redirects human destinies at will. By incorporating this powerful deity, the artist exposes the nature of her internal itineraries: her quest for authentic selfhood, reclamation of identity, and liberation from socially prescribed molds.
In this piece and throughout much of her work, the garabato emerges as a recurring symbol. This humble wooden stick, still used in rural Cuba to clear weeds, likely aided maroon ancestors as they fled plantations and carved new paths through the forest. 4 Red Composition, from the Los Caminos (The Path) series, 1997 Triptych of Polaroid Polacolor Pro photographs Framed: approx. 82 x 56 x 5 cm (32.3 x 22 x 2 in.) each; approx. 82 x 168 x 5 cm (32.3 x 66 x 2 in.) overall Collection of Wendi Norris 12 The garabato also serves as a liturgical instrument of Eleggua, whose emblematic colors—red and black—Campos-Pons intricately weaves into her creations, consistently channeling the orisha’s role as the opener of existential paths. In “Umbilical Cord,” this red-and-black connection links the wombs of multiple generations of women in her lineage, forming a matrilineal tether that nurtures life while defining the boundaries between individual existences.
The presence of the orisha conveys the resilience of Afro-descendant bodies and histories, while a powerful female ancestrality ensures transcendence. This allows Campos-Pons to bridge her intersecting realities: Cuba, the United States, and Africa; past, present, and future; the infinite possibilities of motherhood and sisterhood. These spaces become crossroads, sites of both convergence and discord, where the unpredictable Eleggua reigns. From there, a path to freedom unfolds — a perpetual departure and return always to the very same place: the body of the Black woman. Impassible, eternal: she is the gatherer, the conduit, the vessel. All within herself.
