Artist: María Magdalena Campos-Pons

‘Rite of Initiation (Sacred Bath)’ delivers María Magdalena Campos-Pons into a visual language of her own. The single-channel video, produced with Neil Leonard at Western Front (1991), revisits the earlier super-8 film, ‘Rite of Initiation’ recorded at Massachusetts College of Art (1988). The ritual begins with a red line on the soil, which Pons crosses onto a street. She pours water, flowers, and herbs into five cups, each for an Orisha of the Yoruba pantheon. Once mixed, the offerings return to a jug for the initiate to wash herself during ritual. Other fluids in the ceremony include blood and milk. In her trajectory, Pons returns to physiological motifs with her photography, installation, and drawing, to claiming herself a formalist of living matter.

‘Sacred Bath’ is a gate, leading to decades of unmistakable iconography. ‘Umbilical Cord’ marks Campos Pons deployment of her body in video, drawing, and performance along this early experimental video. Said imagery grows with mix-media portraits such as ‘When I Am Not Here / Estoy Allá’ (1994-1997), where the artist paints her skin to evoke the Orishas as well as invented spiritual figures. In ‘Tra’ (1991), Pons draws a red cross on her forehead. This symbol mirrors the only facial segment in her sacred bath. The red cross, drawn with Nzu chalk, alludes to the four main routes of the slave trade throughout her works.

Campos-Pons incorporated religious references in her early works, although she had not been initiated in Santería at the time. Her parents participated in ceremonies hosted by friends and neighbours, and her father cultivated herbs used in ritual sacrifices. Her desire to incorporate religious iconography in her work was not an isolated development in 1980s Cuban Art. In addition to Ana Mendieta, cuban artists including Wilfredo Lam, Manuel Mendieve, Juan Francisco Also, and José Bedia addressed African influences in Cuban culture. Luis Camnitzer characterized these performances (1979-1980) as extensions of religious ceremonies, separate from actual rituals. In Santería, the manifestation of an Orisha is referred to as Santo, while its imitation receives the name of Santico. Just as Camnitzer’s degrees of sanctity, these two two designations point to non-purist symbolism as practiced by syncretic cultures.

In his studies of Cuban aesthetics and African religions, the historian Gerardo Mosquera stated; ‘in discussing the cultural effect of Africans on America, it is first essential to reject the indiscriminate and habitual use of such words as “influence,” “impact,” and other similar terms. In many cases it would be more appropriate to speak of presence.’ Mosquera defines influence as an external force exerted upon a culture, while presence acknowledges inherent African demographies in the Americas and Caribbean. Thus, a promethean African presence lives at the cultural core of the New World.

Okwui Enwezor observed this promethean figure as creolité. In his essay, ‘The Diasporic Imagination: The Memory Works of Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons,’ Enwezor interprets breaches between Old and New World as chasms of cultural synthesis. Subsequently, he introduced ‘Liminal Circularity’ to name the simultaneous experience of here and there that engenders all diasporas. The second exhibition by María Magdalena Campos Pons in Berlin borrows its title from these reflections. Ensuing ‘The Rise of the Butterflies’ at Galerie Barbara Thumm (2021), the show convenes three pieces from disparate continents and decades. In ‘Family Whisper’ (2021-2023), Campos honours her genealogy as it surges from Angola. Premiered at Sharjah Biennial 15, the multichannel installation presents interviews conducted with the artist ́s family in Cuba. At Sharjah, the dialogues stood adjacent to beds of red sand collected from the Mleiha desert. These mounds, just as the works in Liminal Circularity, signify shores and journeys met by Campos Pons.