artnet Artist Breakfast: Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons

artnet is partnering with ArtTable for their artnet Artist Breakfast series, happening monthly. This month’s featured artist is Cuban artist, Maria Magdalena (Magda) Campos-Pons (b.1959), in conversation with curators Rachel Weingeist and Selene Wendt. Campos-Pons is one of the most influential artists to emerge from Post-Revolutionary Cuba, and has gained increasing international acclaim since her initial training at the Escuela Nacional de Arte and the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana. Her practice builds upon various cultural themes across a diverse range of media, including photography, performance, multimedia installation, painting, and sculpture. She recently represented Cuba at the 55th Venice Biennale with her project, 53+1=54+1=55 / Letter of the Year in which she and her husband, Neil Leonard, collaborated to present different stories of survival, dreams, and wishes by constructing a series of birdcages that contained tiny videos. She also staged a daring, guerrilla performance throughout the Piazza San Marco, which was received with much fanfare.

Celebrated as one of the upcoming young leaders of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by the Women's Chapter, Campos-Pons has been listed among the 100 Most Influential Latinos. She was honored in 2008 by Harvard University, during the launch campaign for the Harvard Art Museum, and again at the Indianapolis Museum of Arts' 125th Anniversary Gala. That same year, a full-scale retrospective of her work also took place. She is a professor at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, co-founder of GASP, a gallery and performance venue, and serves as overseer at the De-Cordova Museum. 

Watch the video to learn more about Campos-Pons’s artwork and artistic process.