Freedom Trap
This series is centered around the cage that white supremacy has formed over her blackness. The model is coated in white paint and garbs to represent the white standard of living that society has empowered and thus oppressed blackness with. Both images show her with a yarn mask over her face and hair symbolize the trap she is placed within. The woman’s blackness still shows under the layers of white that coat her skin, and her hair still escapes the yarn cage. By performing white face, she is trying to gain privilege by adhering to the societal ideals of whiteness. However, her eyes are left looking lifeless and stark. They seem to stand out the most in all of these images. They show the pain that white supremacy has caused blackness. Even when attempting to perform whiteness, blackness is still oppressed because it will never be white. In addition, this causes a hatred of blackness that leads to the lifeless look in her eyes. Thus the collection is titled “Freedom Trap” because of the false ideals that whiteness sells. This cage will not make her any less black nor any more valuable in the face of white supremacy.
While whiteness and Blackness coexist in Cuba, they do not always interact harmoniously. Maria Magdalena is illustrating her experiences with race in the context of Cuba. There is still a culture that praises the Spanish colonizers and prefers to identify with the whiteness of those colonizers. This oppresses the blackness that is present throughout the whole island. The nation she grew up in is the environment within which she first experienced blackness; therefore, we can infer that all her other perceptions of race are based on her upbringing.
She paints the reality of race in a nation where it lives through colorism. Due to mestizaje, many Carribean nations like Cuba do not use racialized language. Instead, they account for their racial identity with their national identity because they all recognize the diaspora from which the nation was born. These communities tend to highlight their differences through classism and colorism because they are more distinguishable. Furthermore, through this series, we can infer that Maria Magdalena is trying to open up the conversation of race by emphasizing the black and white racial binary that exists. She depicts blackness as something that is always present, therefore it should be discussed.
Campos-Pons seems to process her own experiences of blackness by giving them space to live and breathe within her art (Davion). Her use of photography makes these images seem like documents of history. By making herself the model, she establishes a personal connection between her and the message her art is meant to communicate. It represents her history, her relationship with race, and her lived experiences.