Organized by Madison Square Park Conservancy in partnership with Harlem Art Park, the first iteration of the procession began in Harlem and concluded at El Museo del Barrio, passing by the “Dos Alas (Two Wings) Mural.” The second procession started from the Monument to the Cuban writer José Julián Martí in Central Park, stopping at the site of a silent parade where 10,000 Black Americans gathered on July 28, 1917 to protest racial violence, lynching and discrimination, as well as the former site of the Colored Orphan Asylum, the first orphanage for Black children in the United States. The procession concluded in Madison Square Park with a poetry reading by Willie Perdomo, a Carnegie Hall Citywide concert by acclaimed Afro-Cuban jazz singer Daymé Arocena and a performance by musician Kamaal Malak.
Observer caught up with Campos-Pons during the second iteration of the procession to discuss the significance of this collective ritual.
The ritualistic aspect is at the center of this performance and of your entire practice, which uses collective healing processes and reconnection with ancestral lineage to elaborate collective trauma. How do you believe a procession can help connect people and transcend individual needs and feelings to create this communal moment of unity, healing and reflection?
When I was very young, I witnessed processions in my hometown of La Vega, a small former sugar plantation in the heart of the Matanzas Province Southern Countryside. Those celebrations of the Orishas Days, led by Gloria Javielito and Nengo were festive and very serious occasions filled with rituals of respect and care. Those events left an indelible impression on me. The town and its inhabitants always came together as one, plus the many visitors in attendance. They were events of healing and learning. Traditions were passed, and reverie for elders was present. Care for the youth was present. The truth was present. Resiliency and elegance of civic conduct were present. I think as an artist I acquired some profound knowledge then that informs my present practice. Inspired by those sources, this procession emerges as a needed gesture at this moment and as a reflection of and response to the present time. There are dramatic shifts in place, scale, and circumstances, but we, the people, remain fundamentally the same. I am interested in the complexities of this paradox.
As we learned from your recent show at the Brooklyn Museum, your performances are accompanied by and conceived first as drawings and delicate gouaches. I was very interested in the intuitive aspect of those works and how they seem to tap into something more profound in the collective unconscious, emerging from a moment of spiritual reconnection with other spaces and times. Can you tell us more about the process of conceiving your performances—the genesis of your performance works and this one in particular, as well as their relation to the drawings?
My practice is all one interconnected line of ideas and visions. I dream of some pieces. I write others. I draw and paint others. I build objects in the process as healing packets to give to performance participants. When Brooke [Kamin Rapaport] invited me, my first reaction was, “Wow. Why me?” There are so many amazing colleagues I admire in New York; I was surprised and elated at same time. Then I went straight to work.
To celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Madison Square Park Conservancy’s Public Art Program, I mapped and traced the city, incorporating history and personal narratives in ways that are significant to myself and others, like the symbolism of New York City as a nest where all the birds of the planet Earth find a branch to rest, a pool of water from which to drink, restore energy and fly the highest and longest distance. That was true for Jose Marti, Ana Mendieta, Celia Cruz, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Reynaldo Arenas and Juan Delgado Calzadilla. What an extraordinary place.
I did several gouaches of the procession. I imagined words releasing in the air, and for that, I needed poets. I needed words and songs of affirmation and alluring sounds. I wanted to design a pair of shoes and fill the space with a particular scent. I saw the procession moving in with the rhythm of the city but marking a different tempo. Drawing a line of poetry and closing with these amazing musicians, Kamaal Malak and Dayme Arocena is the full circle.
Your talk at the Brooklyn Museum on the occasion of your show made clear that you’re a healer with your artistic practice and that your idea of art cannot be disconnected from its impact on people as an agent of potential positive change. In the end, what’s the role of art for you? With this specific performance, what are you aiming to achieve and generate for those participating or spectating?
I am interested in people I meet as a stranger every day in whatever part of the world I find myself. I have curiosity and love for fellow humans, as we are some of the most extraordinary manifestations of creativity. Each one of us is a miracle and a completely fantastic revelation of the mastery of the universe. That is awe-inspiring material. We are pure abstraction, mystery and magic. We deserve to care and connect with each other through this other enigma that is love.
