María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Extreme Weather
A Getty graduate intern visits the galleries to reflect on the connections between identity, displacement, and climate
Floating Between Temperature Zones from the series Un Pedazo de Mar (which means “A Piece of the Sea”), 2019, María Magdalena Campos-Pons. Gouache, watercolor, graphite, and ink. Collection of Leah Bennett. Image courtesy of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco. © María Magdalena Campos-Pons
Body Content
What do we associate with the words extreme weather? Most often, we think of the climate crisis—hurricanes, wildfires, and all the recent catastrophic events caused by pollution and the exploitation of the planet.
Artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons—whose work I saw at the Getty Center in the spring of 2025—uses the phrase “extreme weather” as a metaphor for the perilous social as well as meteorological conditions encountered by the African diaspora.
At the heart of Campos-Pons’s artistic practice is a deep exploration of identity. As she has said, her art comes from “the space in between” classifying identities, and resists inherited frameworks rooted in colonialism. Currently based in Nashville, she spent the first three decades of her life Cuba and is of African, Chinese, and Hispanic descent. She notes:
I am from many places. I live with that duality and multiplicity in my mind, and in my soul, and in my body. My roots are a bunch of dispersed fragments in the planet, in the universe, in this incredible miasma that is the world.
Campos-Pons was influenced by professor and author Christina Sharpe’s notion of “extreme weather” from her celebrated book In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (2016), in which climate conditions act as a metaphor for the pervasive climate of racism, discrimination, and violence experienced by Black people over history.
An Army of Angels from the series Un Pedazo de Mar (which means “A Piece of the Sea”), 2019, María Magdalena Campos-Pons. Gouache, watercolor, graphite, and ink. The Melo-Gaenslen Collection. Image courtesy of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco. © María Magdalena Campos-Pons
Untitled from the series Un Pedazo de Mar (which means “A Piece of the Sea”), 2019, María Magdalena Campos-Pons. Gouache, watercolor, graphite, and ink. Courtesy of the artist and Galleria Giampaolo Abbondio, Todi and Milan. Image courtesy of the artist and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco. © María Magdalena Campos-Pons
In her Getty exhibition, a section titled “Extreme Weather” included powerful, moving paintings that reference the present-day odyssey of African migrants across the Mediterranean Sea and the history of the transatlantic slave trade.
The imagery of water is a central element, representing a force that offers both life and loss. In the painting Untitled (2019), we see a group of people lost at sea, wearing red life jackets and waving their arms, swimming to survive. The conditions of their journey are dangerous, not only because of the threatening force of the sea, but also because a safe crossing doesn’t necessarily mean acceptance by the country they arrive in. There is no boat, safety net, or someone trying to save them: they are alone, struggling not to drown metaphorically and literally in a sea of racism and indifference. The movement of their arms and the pools of vivid watercolor give a sense of loss, danger, and anxiety. Maybe one of the people is swimming towards another one, trying to save them, or maybe they fell from the boat because it was stranded. They will not be saved, they will not die, they will always be separated in this piece of the sea that entraps them and threatens their lives.
In An Army of Angels (2019), Campos-Pons represents those who survived the Middle Passage and became angels, guarding the journeys of many others after them. Their elongated bodies, emerging from blue watercolor, reference the work of Afro-Chinese Cuban artist Wifredo Lam (1902–1982). In Caribbean imagery, the ocean is sometimes represented as a gravesite, connected to the dreadful Middle Passage. In the painting Floating Between Temperature Zones (2019), the bodies of those who died at sea become “descended angels,” oceanic heavenly creatures that roam these waters.
Blue is a color that was extremely pervasive in this exhibition. It is associated with the ocean, but also the goddess Yemayá, the Yoruba ocean spirit of maternal generosity and protector of sailors. Blue becomes a symbol of life but also the threat of death, a sacred medium and a life-taking force. There is a constant tension between life and death, the personal and the collective, in Campos-Pons’s use of blue.
Installation view of María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold, February 18–May 4, 2025, at the Getty Center. Artwork © María Magdalena Campos-Pons. Image © 2025 J. Paul Getty Trust
In the age of climate crisis, the art of Campos-Pons reminds us that extreme weather is not just an atmospheric condition, it is also the cultural and social environment in which we live. The works in this section of the exhibition conveyed a sense of the unknown, reflecting the fear and uncertainty of people caught in the grip of atmospheric, social, and political forces to which, in most cases, they are compelled to submit. Yet through these works, Campos-Pons gestures towards collective resilience and solidarity, emphasizing the enduring strength and hope that emerge in the face of oppression.
