When We Gather

multi-faceted art project
created by María Magdalena Campos-pons
UsA (film — 2021, performance — 2022)
role: producer
Client: Gallery wendi norris & Creative time

Visionary artist María Magdalena Campos-Pon conceived When We Gather in collaboration with Okwui Okpokwasili and LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs in late 2020, inspired by the election of the first female vice president in the United States. The project celebrates the women who have played an elemental role in the progress of the United States and offers a call to create a path forward for the leaders of the future.

When We Gather was initially envisioned as a performance art piece to be staged around the White House, but due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it was re-imagined as a short art film directed by Codie Elaine Oliver and an accompanying behind-the-scenes documentary directed by Gabi Madsen. The films were produced, executed, and filmed during the pandemic by an all-female-identifying team in separate studios and outdoor spaces across the country as both performance and ritual, and released in 2021.

In the film, seven artists perform gestures evoking storms, spirals, and ancestral energy. While moving counterclockwise in a circle, the artists tie seven knots with a piece of blue fabric, manifesting a connection between them. The number seven nods to the seven directions in the Cherokee tradition and represents the primordial mother in Yoruba religion, while the circle symbolizes healing, unity, and potential.

In 2022, When We Gather was performed live for the first time at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with the museum’s Afro-Atlantic Histories exhibition. It was the first performance artwork commissioned by the National Gallery of Art.

Screenings
”María Magdalena Campos-Pons: Behold,” Brooklyn Museum 2023-24
Virtual Wednesday, deYoung Museum 2021
Sundown Cinema x Norton Museum of Art 2021
Indianapolis Museum of Art 2021
Scratch Space, Montalvo Arts Center 2021
Symposium of Latin American Art 2021
Brown University 2021
Operation Cura Personalis, Georgetown University 2021
Indiana University Cinema 2021
21c Museum Hotels 2021
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Oxford Photo Festival 2021
Girl Power Film + Media Summit 2021
African Film Festival New York 2021
Los Angeles Women’s International Film Festival 2021
NatiVisions Film Festival 2021
Garifuna International Indigenous Film Festival 2021
Oklahoma Cine Latino Film Festival 2021