María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold

Edited by Carmen Hermo, with contributions by Mazie M. Harris, Jenée-Daria Strand, Phillip Townsend, Selene Wendt, and an introduction by Amalia Mesa-Bains 

This vibrantly illustrated survey of the career of contemporary artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons delves into her diverse oeuvre of painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, film, and performance.

María Magdalena Campos-Pons (b. 1959) makes powerful work that holds and beholds the stories of historically silenced peoples and urges societal change. Her journey as an artist, teacher, and activist has taken her from Cuba through the United States, and her autobiographical compositions honor her Nigerian and Chinese ancestors while also facing the future. With an artistic practice that crosses boundaries, intertwines media—from photography to sculpture, film to performance—and references traditions and beliefs ranging from feminism to Santería, Campos-Pons’s work is deeply layered and complex.

This volume, the first critical look at the artist’s oeuvre in nearly two decades, surveys the concerns, materials, and places invoked throughout her forty-year career. Thoughtful essays explore her vibrant, arresting artwork, which confronts issues of agency and the construction of race and belonging and challenges us to reckon with these issues in our own lives.

This volume, copublished with the Brooklyn Museum, accompanies an exhibition on view at the Brooklyn Museum from September 15, 2023, to January 14, 2024, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University from February 15 to June 9, 2024, the Frist Art Museum from September 27, 2024, to January 5, 2025, and the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center from February 11 to May 4, 2025. 

Carmen Hermo is associate curator at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum.

“A singular informative, visually stellar, memorably impressive, and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, professional, community, college, and university librar[ies].”
—Midwest Book Review

216 pages
9 x 10 1/2 inches
193 color and 1 b/w illustrations
ISBN 978-1-60606-858-8
hardcover

Getty Publications
Imprint: J. Paul Getty Museum + Brooklyn Museum

2023