María Magdalena Campos-Pons delivered a 2024 Rubenstein Guest Artist Lecture that emphasized connections among humanity, the planet, and the divine.

The arrival of María Magdalena Campos-Pons at Sidwell Friends as the 2024 Rubenstein Guest Artist heralded special workshops with students, new pieces in the Kogod Arts Center gallery, and an evening lecture for the community. But in addition to these artistic engagements, Campos-Pons ushered in something else—something more otherworldly.

“Beautiful and paralyzing—that’s what it is to be a human,” she told the audience at the Rubenstein Guest Artist Lecture at Sidwell Friends on October 28. The Cuban-born, protean artist whose work flows freely across genres of painting, performance art, sculpture, and photography spoke about the metaphysical themes present in her work. “Every one of us is a spiritual being,” she said. “Each one of us is a miracle. The mere presence of people is beautiful. Humanity is both extraordinary and vulnerable.”

That vulnerability is evident in her depictions of the fragility of bodies, the precariousness of the planet, and the perpetual looming threat of violence for those who are labeled “different.” But as Campos-Pons’s pieces further demonstrate, where there is vulnerability there is also room for the exceptional. Campos-Pons, a 2023 MacArthur Award winner, invited the audience to consider life here on Earth as a remarkable opportunity for connection. “We should be courageous and participate in this experience,” she said, noting that no one bleeds blue on this planet. “Blood is red for every single man and woman on this little island—Earth. That’s why I am not an immigrant, I am an Earthling.” 

This astrophysical sense of place was on full display when Campos-Pons shared a seven-minute video installation, In the Beginning, featuring dozens of original watercolors. A priest from a church in Milan, Italy, commissioned her to create a fresco that reimagines the Book of Genesis, and In the Beginning is a product of her research for that fresco. It begins with simple circular shapes that are given a high-tech twist as they molt and morph into one another in an array of hyper-saturated fuchsias, blues, purples, limes, and crimsons. The shapes seem to be cells, seeds, fruits, planets, moons, eyes—and all of these at once. Campos-Pons calls it her “melancholy reflection and hope for planet Earth.”

After the video, in a conversation with Dorothy Moss P ’25, ’27, a former curator at the National Portrait Gallery who brought performance art to that institution by commissioning a piece from Campos-Pons, the pair discussed the national zeitgeist a week out from a tense presidential election in which Americans seem more divided than ever. “The fragility of the moment is because of the potentiality of a new beginning,” she said. “It is a moment of reckoning, a moment of great opportunity, and a moment of the unknown. The curse of being an artist is that we feel so much—and if we are brave enough, it is our responsibility to see, grasp, and tell: The unknown will be defined by what we do.”

Indeed, Campos-Pons’s art and life are defined by action—be it a “radical love” processional connecting Harlem Art Park to Madison Square Park in New York City or a Day of Art in her hometown of Matanzas, Cuba, in which the city is turned into a laboratory of hands-on art projects. At Sidwell Friends, which she called a “temple of education,” Campos-Pons sprang to action in the classroom and spoke to Middle Schoolers who had already studied her art and made their own homages to her work (also on display in the Kogod Arts Center). “Every student I met opened a new set of questions for me,” she said. “They are smart—super smart. I see my work in a different way through their eyes.”

Director of Art Exhibitions at Sidwell Friends Aaron Brophy said that Campos-Pons, who goes by “Magda,” gave each student her full attention. “While with Eliza Bright’s Middle School class in the art gallery,” said Brophy, “I found myself slipping back into the role of a student, raising my hand, and waiting to be called on.”

Campos-Pons also had a private lunch with some of the School’s art faculty and watched an Upper School painting class taught by Catherine Dunn. “Magda exuded a generosity of spirit in all her personal interactions on campus,” said Brophy. “Students and faculty were touched by her remarkable ability to be completely present.”

“Interactions like this enrich the Sidwell experience exponentially,” said Moss. “It was magical to watch the students with her.” Moss, who previously worked at the National Portrait Gallery with both Campos-Pons and sculptor Barton Rubenstein ’81, whose family launched the guest artist program, was key to bringing Campos-Pons to Sidwell Friends. “Having worked with Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons and followed her career for the past decade, I knew she would be a perfect fit for Sidwell,” said Moss. “Her passion for history, her compassionate approach to artmaking, her activist work with children and educators in Cuba, and her hopeful messages of unity and healing seemed particularly appropriate at this time.”

But time is difficult for Campos-Pons to find these days: In addition to the commission in Milan, a traveling retrospective of her work is on exhibit at the Frist in Nashville and will soon open at the Getty in Los Angeles, and she has an upcoming project at the Tate Modern in London. “I didn’t think it would be possible to have her this year, but she generously made time to speak with the Sidwell community of parents and students,” said Moss. “She enjoyed every minute, especially with the students. She wrote to me that her message to our school community about the experience is ‘endless gratitude.’”

The gratitude goes both ways, as Sidwell Friends Head of School Bryan Garman put it: “Even days after Magda left, I reflected on how her words hit so many beautiful notes and how we needed to hear each one right now.” In addition to her words, Sidwell Friends is proud to showcase five pieces of Campos-Pons’s original work in the Kogod Arts Center gallery: Island Treasures (photography), The Gift (watercolor), Containment Thoughts (watercolor), December 17, 1999 (photography), and When We Gather (video/performance).

With work that has been featured in biennials on five continents, Campos-Pons’s art is a lot like her ethnic roots: multicultural. She described herself as a “Caribbean, Nigerian, Chinese, Cuban, Black woman,” which makes it easy to understand how she would have a decidedly global—even galactic—perspective on life.

“We need to stop talking to each other like foreigners,” she implored the Rubenstein lecture audience. “We are not foreigners to this planet. We all are sons and daughters of Earth and we better care for each other.”

A visibly moved Garman responded to her: “I cannot remember a more beautiful expression of love in this room. Thank you for reminding us that the most important thing is for humans to take care of humans.”

Campos-Pons brought the universe itself into the Robert L. Smith Meeting Room that evening, leaving the audience a bit awed—not just through her work but through the sheer depth of her presence. “Earth is a little island,” she said. “Everyone belongs to this island. Take a breath to continue the journey.”

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The Daryl Reich Rubenstein Guest Artist Program has been an endowed, flagship program at Sidwell Friends for over four decades. Since its inception, dozens of nationally recognized artists have exhibited at Sidwell Friends and shared their life’s work with the community. Click here to watch Campos-Pons’s full lecture.