IDENTIFY: María Magdalena Campos-Pons

A woman wearing a layered blue and white dress processing through an outdoor pavillion
FEFA performance by Campos-Pons and Leonard at the Guggenheim Museum, 2014. Photo by Toshiki Yashiro. Carrie Mae Weems LIVE: Past Tense/Future Perfect, Executive Producer the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, April 25-27, 2014. The name and image of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum are trademarks of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Used with permission. 

The Portrait Gallery’s first-ever performance art series, IDENTIFY, focuses attention on activism, visibility, and experimentation in portraiture. This Saturday, María Magdalena Campos Pons and Neil Leonard will perform the piece Identified.

Campos-Pons and Leonard, a saxophonist, reinsert the black body into historical narratives. Under the name FEFA, they use personal stories, music, and procession to evoke both protest and devotion. 

Here’s what FEFA says about their performance:

The performance at the site of Lincoln’s inaugural ball presents a study of the president who freed the slaves. It also considers the repercussions of his actions as they reverberated through the colonies, the Caribbean, and Brazil. Destinations in the transatlantic journey of black slaves, such as Brazil, Cuba, the U.S., and Haiti, bear witness to the incomplete struggle of black vs. white and the resulting racial intolerance.

Through recitation, music, movement, and costume, this performance illuminates present struggles, focusing on the process of healing. The music explores the processional essence of music, from Civil War–era brass bands, to the first jazz ensembles of New Orleans, to Cuban music.

Campos-Pons’s performance will begin in the Robert and Arlene Kogod at 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, May 14, and travel throughout the museum. Associate Curator Dorothy Moss will introduce the performance. For more information, visit our website.

Support for the IDENTIFY performance art series has been provided by the Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center; an anonymous donor; the Philip and Elizabeth Ryan Fund; the Director’s Visionary Fund; Carol and John Boochever; The Skanby + Gould Foundation; and other individual contributors.