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24/2/2007

Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons

Indianapolis Museum of Art IMA, Indianapolis

Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons
Everything Is Separated by Water

The first full-scale survey of the acclaimed Afro-Cuban artist’s work, IMA’s María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Everything Is Separated by Water presents 34 paintings, sculptures, new media installations and large-format Polaroid photographs, all created since Campos-Pons left Cuba for North America in 1990.

One of the most important artists to emerge from post-Revolutionary Cuba, María Magdalena Campos-Pons re-assembles fragments and symbols of personal and collective memories to grapple with her imagined displacement from Africa, her actual exile from Cuba, and her experience as a black Cuban woman living in North America. Her conceptually based works transcend pure biography or identity politics. When she uses personal experience as the basis for projects, she does so to speak about larger cultural and historical phenomena.

The title of the exhibition and its catalogue, borrowed from one of her works, evokes the dangerous sea crossings faced by her enslaved African ancestors and by her Cuban contemporaries seeking greater freedom in America. It also evokes the sense of dislocation felt when physical and geopolitical barriers separate the past from the present, and family from friends—conditions that, though painful, have fostered important creative innovations by artists of diasporic communities around the world.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by the Indianapolis Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press. With essays by curator Lisa Freiman and Okwui Enwezor, Dean of Academic Affairs at the San Francisco Art Institute and past Artistic Director of Documenta XI, Kassel, Germany, 2002, the catalogue traces the formal and conceptual transformation of Campos-Pons’ work in relation to contemporary aesthetic practices and serves as a resource for specialists in the field of contemporary, African Diasporic, Caribbean, and African American art and culture.

María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Everything Is Separated by Water is supported in part by grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts– Access to Artistic Excellence category. The National Endowment for the Arts is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts, both new and established; bringing the arts to all Americans; and providing leadership in arts education.

The exhibition catalogue is made possible in part through a grant from the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation.

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AfroCuba: Works on Paper, 1968–2003
2/25/2007 through 6/3/2007
McCormack Forefront Gallery

AfroCuba: Works on Paper, 1968–2003 is a groundbreaking exhibition of 56 prints and drawings by 26 artists from Havana and Santiago de Cuba. The artists represent a cross section of Cuban society, and their works exhibit a diverse range of subject matter, styles and techniques. AfroCuba features contributions by artist-members of Grupo Antillano, which evolved in the late 1970s and whose work underscores Cuba’s African heritage, as well as artists who were sent to Africa, particularly Angola, either as combatants in revolutionary struggles or as cultural attachés. The exhibition also features works by artists whose imagery is derived from AfroCuban religious expressions, including Santería, and works that comment on Cuban race and social relations, including recent works that cast a more critical eye on Cuba’s political and economic conditions. This 35-year chronicle of AfroCuban art testifies to the vitality and richness of work produced on this nearby island.

AfroCuba: Works on Paper, 1968–2003 was organized by San Francisco State University Fine Arts Gallery and curated by Judith Bettelheim. The exhibition is circulated by Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions.

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William Rasdell: African Roots in Cuban Soil
February 25–July 15, 2007
Star Studio

Indianapolis artist William Rasdell’s exhibition in Star Studio will feature digitally altered photographs, video and sculptures. The works were made in response to visits to the Callejon de Hamel, an alley in Havana that is the site of murals and sculptures by Cuban artist Salvador Gonzalez Escolona that reference the history and importance of Afro-Cuban religions. The Callejon de Hamel is also the site of a weekly Rumba, when musicians, dancers, locals and tourists pack the alley. Visitors will be able to explore some of the elements of a Rumba by playing musical instruments, experimenting with hands-on materials and exploring art-making processes related to Rasdell’s work.


Image: Everything Is Separated by Water, Including My Brain, My Heart, My Sex, My House, 1990
Mixed-media installation water-based enamel on board, wire, wool threads approx. 7 ft. x 6 ft. x 4 in. (213.4 x 182.9 x 10.2 cm) Courtesy of the Artist © Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, used with permission

Press info:
Katie Zarich
Communications Coordinator 317-923-1331 ext. 295 kzarich@ima.museum

Located at 4000 Michigan Road, the IMA is open Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Thursday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. IMA is closed Mondays and Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s day.
Admission
Adults (ages 18-64) $12
Seniors (65+) $10
College Students w/valid I.D. $6
Children (ages 7-17) $6
Children (ages 6 and under) Free
$10 per person for groups of 10 or more

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