Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons

Imole Red

Initially I started reading about the history of AlUla to familiarize myself with the social and horticultural topography, from afar. However, arriving here was a different story. This is a place where I feel full of mystical energy; it is a profound, spiritual place. This is a cathedral of the air. Imole Red in the North Canyon of Desert X AlUla 2026 is a gesture to reconnect with nature, an invitation to have a conversation with the colors and textures surrounding us. This canyon is a garden. The contours of the rock change chromatically in the sun, from yellow, ochre, red, to purple and blue. I am trying to synthesize color, light and energy into a blossoming, alchemical garden.

‘Imole’ references the word in Yoruba language that means light. The sunset here is extraordinary. I work within what I call the color code of the Yoruba pantheon, and have focused on yellow and gold, the hues associated with sunset reflecting on the water. These are associated with Oshun, deity of the river that bears her name, symbolic of spiritual vitality and life’s flow. Placing the sculpture in a flood plain honors the valley’s past, a place where our human scale demands humility.

I make work about my heritage but always attuned to the interrelation of other bodies in specific geographies. How do we each respond to being in a new place? Can I insert a new provocation, rooted in radical love, in a context with its own particular lineage. Radical Love is about human proximity, finding what brings us together in a shared destiny on this planet.

One answer to these questions is a performance offering. As part of my collaboration as one half of KaMag (with musician and composer Kamaal Malak), we will consider how these elements can converge: the magnitude, the elegance, the mystery transformed into sound and improvised choreography. It is astonishing how simple movements, words uttered with love for all, can speak to the extraordinary complexity that exists here in AlUla.

From setting foot in this landscape, every corner reminds me of the work of my fellow Cuban artist, the late Ana Mendieta. I believe this place is an incredible, beautiful gift from nature back to us. I can only make parallel notations in response.

About the Artist

Born 1959, Matanzas, Cuba, María Magdalena Campos-Pons self-describes as a gatherer, a conduit and a vessel, and draws on Afro-Cuban systems of belief to summon the spiritual as a way of transcending historical trauma. Known for her photographic self-portraits and ritualistic performances, Campos-Pons also creates multi-media installations. She uses artisanal objects and archival photographs to symbolize the lost histories of the dispossessed, giving them vivid new life.

Her work has been exhibited and performed at the Venice Biennale; documenta 14; Havana Biennial; Dakar Biennale; Johannesburg Biennale; Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA; Guggenheim Museum; National Portrait Gallery,Washington, DC; Sharjah Biennial 15 UAE; 14th Gwangju Biennale, Tate Modern London: and After Rain, 2nd edition of Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale Riyadh.

In 2023 a multi-media survey of her work titled María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold toured from the Brooklyn Museum to the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the Frist Art Museum, culminating with the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 2025.

Campos-Pons’s work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; amongst many others.

Campos-Pons is also the Cornelius Vanderbilt Endowed Chair of Fine Arts at Vanderbilt University and has founded numerous artist-run programs such as GASP (Boston, 2003), EADJ (Nashville, 2018) and Intermittent Rivers (Cuba, 2019).