Campos-Pons, in blue, speaks to the “angels” before the beginning of the march at Harlem Art Park on 120th Street. Credit:Graham Dickie/The New York Times
16 September 2024
On a gray and drizzly Saturday morning, 120 people or so met at a small East Harlem park to begin a walk organized by the Cuban American artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons, whose work was the subject of a major retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum in 2023, the same year she won a MacArthur Fellowship.
At her request, the crowd, a mix of downtown art lovers and neighborhood residents, came dressed in white, yellow and blue; some carried signs provided at the park’s gate reading “Gratitude,” “Love,” “Unity!” The artist Carrie Mae Weems came to lend her support and a group of models wearing white robes designed by House of Bartholomew, a New York clothing line, carrying bundles of herbs, peacock feathers and flowers, stood in quiet formation around us.
In her welcoming remarks, Campos-Pons told the crowd that, rather than a protest, “this is a walk of love, a walk for hope, a walk for the future, a walk for people who precede us and for people who are not yet here.” Billed as a “Procession of Angels for Radical Love and Unity,” the event spans two mornings in September. Last Saturday’s route started at the Harlem Art Park, a cobblestone site on East 120th Street in the heart of a neighborhood home to African Americans and people from Puerto Rican, Mexican, Caribbean, and African diasporas. The second procession is on Sept. 20 and will begin in Central Park and end in Madison Square Park, in the wealthy Flatiron district.
It was Brooke Kamin Rapaport, the artistic director and chief curator for the Madison Square Park Conservancy, the nonprofit that oversees that space, who invited Campos-Pons to create a work to mark the 20th anniversary of the organization’s public art program. They collaborated closely with Debbie Quiñones, a longtime community activist and the co-founder of Friends of Art Park Alliance, a volunteer organization that maintains the Harlem Art Park and organizes programming there.
For Rapaport, this would be an opportunity to push her program into other parts of the city, an endeavor begun earlier this year with Rose B. Simpson’s project “Seed,” which took place in both Madison Square Park and Inwood Hill Park. For Quiñones, it was a chance to bring attention to Harlem Art Park, where both “Growth,” a 1985 sculpture by Jorge Luis Rodriguez, and the park infrastructure need maintenance, Quiñones said. And for Campos-Pons, it was an invitation to bring her performances out of museums and into public spaces in Manhattan.
“‘Procession of Angels’ isn’t a convening against something — against a war or an oppressing social issue,” said Rapaport. “This was a marshaling of people for something, for unity around communities, poetry, reading, music, creativity.”
For residents of East Harlem, the vibe was novel, Quiñones pointed out. “We do protest here all the time, you know? It’s always been a hub and vibrant place for radical discussions and movements.” She added, “This is a refreshing change for people who have always been on the front lines of different battles.”
Campos-Pons, whose work consistently delves into the language of Santería and the spirituality of her Afro-Cuban ancestors, chose Sept. 7 for the first event because it is a feast day of Yemaya, the Yoruba orisha (or divinity) of the ocean; it was right before the feast day of Oshun, the orisha associated with fresh water. She considers them her guardian spirits.
The invocation of water spirits is especially significant, given the site. “When I visited the Harlem Art Park, I noticed that the fountain there doesn’t have water — it was never completed,” Campos-Pons said. “And I immediately thought we need to do something about that. We need to create the spiritual energy that will bring this fountain back to life.”
Campos-Pons’s enthusiasm is infectious, her friends saybut she has also committed funds from her MacArthur prize — a $800,000, no-strings-attached award — to the fountain’s restoration, and to the education of Hern, the young poet. (Hern said he hopes to go to Morehouse College but doesn’t know yet what he’d like to study.)
Quiñones is both thrilled and nervous about the possibility of restoring the fountain; she struggles to keep plants that the city supplies alive without running water, but worries about changes in how the park is used as well as sanitary issues. “I would love to bring water to the park, it’s my vision too, but then I think about the day after, you know?”
The second walk on Sept. 20 will begin at the monument to José Julián Martí in Central Park, pass by the sites of the 1917 Silent Protest Parade, organized by the NAACP to condemn racist violence, and the former Colored Orphan Asylum, and end in Madison Square Park — the final link in the chain connecting East Harlem and downtown. The poets Patricia Spears Jones, Major Jackson, Willie Perdomo and Haviland Nona Gai Whiting will read their work, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Dr. Ada Ferrer will share Martí’s writings, and the musician Kamaal Malak, Campos-Pons’s partner, will perform.
After the first procession, Quiñones, who works full time at the New York State Department of health in addition to her volunteer work supporting the park, was elated. She and other volunteers are able to organize a variety of events — including pride celebrations, dance lessons and temporary art installations by notable New York artists — only by cobbling together small grants from city departments, which require time-consuming applications. “I walked away inspired to get back into that zone of creativity, you know?” she said. “I was kind of in a funk, struggling with funding, and with just getting stuff done. But I’m reinvigorated.”
She was not the only one to experience the power of Campos-Pons’ intervention. As the crowd left Harlem Art Park, the artist invoked Yemaya to fuel their journey. At that very moment, the skies opened, and rain poured down.
Procession of Angels for Radical Love and Unity
On Sept. 20, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., the second procession will convene at the south end of Central Park at the José Julián Martí statue, West 59th Street and Center Drive, New York; madisonsquarepark.org.
