Sugar: Bittersweet
Sugar: Bittersweet
Through this installation, Maria explored the racial relations of the Cuban society she grew up in. The visibility of mestizaje is the center of this work. These structures represent the bodies of Cubans. The spears and stools that she used were all either made in Africa or in China. And the mounds that are on the spears are composed of sugar and glass (Smith College Museum of Art). The mounds of sugar come in shades of white, brown or black as a direct commentary on the racial composition of Cuba. The use of mounds of sugar to tell this story of race establishes the sugar cane fields as the birthplace of the Cuban nation. This is an installation about the blackness within the Cuban nation.
Furthermore, Maria was very intentional with the composition of this piece. These spears represent people of different skin tones living together and coexisting in Cuba. They are arranged in neat rows that Campos recalls reminded her of the sugar cane fields she grew up by (Smith College Museum of Art); these structures are depicting Cuba as a community that was built on colonization, slavery, and sugar cane production. In addition, each spear has a stool either at its base or in between the mounds of sugar. I believe that the stools represent blackness as foundational to their lives. Then, the black sugar represents the bodies of the Africans that were forced to migrate to Cuba and have since been essential to the development of Cuba as a nation free of Spanish dominion; these are mounds of molasses which is the rawest version of sugar present. While the brown mounds illustrate the mestizaje of a diaspora. The varying shades are a direct representation of the nation. And the white mounds, which are the most refined form of sugar she used, represent the whiteness that is also mixed into Cuban culture. Maria did an interesting thing where she placed in very similar glass mounds to bring back the idea of the crystallization process of sugar that occurs when it is at its most refined stage. “Azúcar crystalina” is the white refined sugar, and in spanish it has a direct relationship with glass because “crystalina” means glass-like. She brings up the role that language plays in the performance of race, but through the sugar that represents it.
The title of the installation, Sugar: Bittersweet, hints at the paradox within the state of race in Cuba. It has its own form of existing, yet it is also silenced and racism and colorism is still prevalent. I can see the presence of this paradox within her art. Maria paints memories of the sugar cane fields that defined her community that she loves, but that also hold the pain and trauma of her ancestors in the soil. Through her art, she depicts the history of blackness in Cuba as the history of the Cuban people. Her work carries the essence of mestizaje that defines the African diaspora. It defines Cuba in terms of blackness because that is who she is and her art is autobiographical in the end. Maria’s work is defining her existence through the memories it has constructed of her ancestors from how she has personally interacted with her past.