Hello all!
I don’t usually do these posts, but I want to appeal to all of you art history lovers out there! Some colleagues of mine in my art history graduate program are collecting donations for an exhibition of the art of Afro-Cuban artist, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons.
PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING! CLICK HERE TO GIVE.
If you can’t donate, please share wherever and however you can. Let’s support these students and a talented and important Afro-Cuban artist!
Their collective and project:
What is Neon Queen Collective?
Formed in early 2017, the Neon Queen Collective is a trio of Austin-based curators and UT doctoral students—Jessi DiTillio, Kaila Schedeen, and Phillip Townsend—who seek to present socially engaged art produced by feminist artists of color. Our group focuses on producing visual art exhibitions, workshops, lectures, performances, and discussions.
What are you raising money for?
This Hornraiser would support our first major exhibition project, the beginning of a two part exhibition series featuring the internationally significant Afro-Cuban artist, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons. Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons is one of the most celebrated living artists to emerge from post-Revolutionary Cuba. For over three decades, Campos-Pons has explored questions of race, gender, class and memory within African and Latin American Diasporic communities in lyrical yet historically rooted photography, sculpture, video, and performance. Her work has been featured in the top-tier of art venues in the world, including the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Venice Biennale, the Documenta art fair, and many more.
The opening exhibition, slated for January 2018 at the Christian-Green Gallery in Jester, uses the history of sugar to unpack the United States’ complex relationship with Cuba. While presenting a biographical sketch of Campos-Pons’ family, the exhibition seeks to highlight the United States’ and Cuba’s roles in the transatlantic slave trade, the crumbling sugar trade in Cuba, and the socioeconomic and political impact on the descendants of enslaved Africans living on the island and in the United States.
Why does this exhibition matter?
Campos-Pons has dedicated her career to picturing and exploring the experience of transnational immigration and cultural hybridization, both personally and universally. This focus makes her work especially important in our current political climate, in which immigrants are struggling for human recognition. Bringing this exhibition to UT’s campus will benefit students, faculty, and staff by providing a platform for open, whole-hearted discussion about the immigrant experience.
Why do you need my help?
As a student-run collective, we are seeking to produce a museum-quality art exhibition independently. We've already raised a substantial amount from the University, but need your help to make this project happen at the scale and level of professionalism we envision. We will be borrowing several artworks from prestigious museum collections in the Northeast, including the Hutchins Art Center at Harvard University and the Peabody-Essex Museum. The piece being borrowed from Harvard, Sugar/Bittersweet, is a large-scale sculptural installation made of blown-glass and spun sugar. This work is beautiful, conceptually provocative, and very fragile, necessitating substantial funds for its careful shipment to Texas.
Additionally, we plan to use funds raised by the Hornraiser to bring the Campos-Pons to Austin to speak and create a site-specific performance. For the relatively new Christian-Green Gallery, which was renovated and opened in February 2016, such a significant artist will bring statewide and national attention to the gallery and the important work being done at the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies. The exhibition will also be the first time Campos-Pons has exhibited in Texas since 1992!
