Introduction
Memory of the past is a construct of an individual's imagination. How can we remember what we did not experience? Like many identities, blackness in the Latinx culture is based on the memories that give people a connection to their ancestors. I am intrigued by the expression of blackness through art as a form of capturing the stories of survival and existence of Afro-Latinx people. The intersectionality of blackness shows up in art to disrupt rigid identity politics in order to erase the intricacy of history. These ideas lead me to the questions that are the basis for my research:
How do we as Afro-Latinx people express our past into our present? How do we translate our histories to help us process and explore ourselves? How do we shape blackness by what we communicate about it?
I have chosen to make Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons and her artwork the subject of my research. Through her art I will dissect how she explores blackness. As a Cuban woman who has Nigerian and Chinese ancestry, Campos-Pons has made her identity the subject of her work (Phillijb). Her art attempts to put the past and present in communication with each other to illustrate the relationship between them. It places an emphasis on the present-time interpretation of the past, not the contents of the past itself.
Growing up in Cuba, she noticed that Black art was missing in the museums around her and she felt like her story was unrepresented (Davion). She then took it upon herself to create and publicize her own story. Campos-Pons’ art is autobiographical in nature because it illustrates her memory of her past to communicate the way it has impacted the systems that shape her experiences today.
Born in the region of Matanzas in Cuba, sugar cane fields played a huge role in the lives and development of her community. People would work the fields for profit and for self-benefit. The large amounts of mestizaje that occurred have made blackness prevalent throughout the whole island, thus it is very important to the national development of Cuba. Also making racism and colorism present in the foundation of the nation. Campos-Pons is interested in expressing the intersectionality of these cross-generational and cross-cultural identities: “I am as much black, Cuban, woman, Chinese. I am this tapestry of all of that, and the responses to that could be very complicated” (Joshi).
This paper will explore her artwork to further contextualize the blackness within Latinidad today. As a Black Cuban woman who has been living in the United States since 1991, Campos-Pons went from being an Afro-Cuban to also being an Afro-Latina. In the context of the United States, her artwork takes on broader meanings because minorities carry a more communal identity in this nation. Thus, I will also analyze the relation that her work has to the expression of Blackness in the Carribean. Her work is no longer just Cuban, it is Afro-Latinx work that details the intersectionality of Black history by retelling it from her perspective.