Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons (born 1959) 'Los Caminos' (The Path) (from 'When I Am Not Here, Estoy Alla'), 1997 A triptych of large-format Polaroid prints, printed 2009; each flush-mounted, signed, titled, dated, annotated, and editioned '1/5' in ink and a Peg Alston Fine Arts, New York, gallery label on the reverse, framed. each approximately 29 1/2 x 24 1/4 in. (74.9 x 61.6 cm.) each sheet 32 x 24 5/8 in. (81.3 x 62.5 cm.) Footnotes: Provenance Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner Literature Lisa D. Freiman, ed., María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Everything Is Separated by Water (Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2007), pl. 15 Note Born in 1959 in La Vega-a sugar plantation located in Matanzas, Cuba-and a descendent of the transatlantic slave trade, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons has long explored the diasporic themes of fragmentation, displacement, and multiculturalism. She made her earliest work in the 1980s as a student in post-Revolutionary Cuba at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, where she grappled with female sexuality, and more specifically, the female body as a site of control and postcolonial violence. In 1988, Campos-Pons attended the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston as an exchange student, where she expanded her technical practice by experimenting with photography, performance, and installation. During this time, she became increasingly preoccupied with producing images that addressed the intersections of race, gender, and the geopolitical implications of her own Afro-Cuban ancestry. Influenced by the work of other postmodern, black, female photographers, such as Carrie Mae Weems and Lorna Simpson, Campos-Pons turned to photography, often making large-format Polaroid polyptychs as a means to execute her diasporic project. In an artist statement about her first major Polaroid series, Campos-Pons explains: 'When I Am Not Here/Estoy Allá is a project about the spaces that are constructed between dualities: Cuban vs. American, to live in America physically and practically and at the same time in Cuba spiritually and mentally. Spaces between, distances and proximities, traditions and contemporary practices. In this project I want to reflect on the components of the African American tradition (that somehow was and still is part of my life), and at the same time those traditions pertaining to the new country that I now inhabit. Where do I belong and what belongs to me? I want to analyze the formal spaces between photography and painting (when I place my body and my skin as a painting surface), between two dimensional and three dimensional, between rite and performance. The person that I am and the others that I was, or wish I were.' (María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Everything Is Separated by Water, p. 52). In the present work, Campos-Pons photographs her own body-a product of cultural crosscurrents-to capture the tension described above. In each panel, she uses colors, objects, garments, hairstyles, and plants to recall both her Cuban and African heritage. Campos-Pons alludes to her mixed identity, but as her face becomes more obscured in each image, she rejects straight, documentary-style photography. The resultant composition speaks to the challenge of constructing coherent identity and serves as a declaration of existing in the 'in-between'. This triptych from When I Am Not Here/Estoy Allá has never appeared at auction. At the time of this writing, fewer than five works from this series have been known to come to market. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing