Murmullo Familiar [family whisper] (2021–2023)

Overview

Maria Magdalena Campos- Pons’ practice interweaves autobiographical elements of her Afro-Cuban heritage with historical narratives of the African diaspora. Murmullo Familiar [family whisper] (2021–2023) comprises a multimedia installation and series of paintings. While centring her grandmother of Angolan origin, the paintings reinterpret the Atlantic slave trade route from West Africa to the Caribbean as a site of conscious return and healing. In conversation with these paintings are historical memorabilia and family heirlooms that explore parallel narratives. Alongside beds of red sand collected from Sharjah’s Mleiha desert, a set of glass stools, cast from a cross- generational heirloom, operate as metaphors of absence, representing those unaccounted for by the ruptures of Afro-Cuban history.