“The Nature of All Our Forms”: María Magdalena Campos-Pons on Performance Art

In the inaugural episode of In the Foreground, Caro Fowler (Starr Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute) speaks with María Magdalena Campos-Pons, a multidisciplinary artist and the Cornelius Vanderbilt Endowed Chair of Fine Arts at Vanderbilt University. Magda recounts her early progressive education and the importance of the exchange of ideas with her mentors and other women artists and describes how she carries that generosity forward in her own teaching. They discuss how performance art addresses transformations of the human body, whether through processes of aging or technological prosthetics, and Magda reflects on her decision to document her performances (or not). Throughout the interview, Magda returns to the long and elemental force of performance on the formation of human knowledge, including in our everyday experiences navigating Covid-19.