María Magdalena Campos-Pons has spent decades exploring how history lives in the body—how migration and diaspora leave marks that are both painful and transcendent. Her sculptures, videos, and installations have gradually become fixtures in major US museums, culminating in a 2023 Brooklyn Museum retrospective that introduced her work to a wider audience.
But her most recent project breaks from her usual practice in an unexpected way. This year, Campos-Pons designed the bronze awards given to the winners of ARTnews's annual awards—a commission that transformed the trophy into something more than recognition. It became another artwork.
The awards are rooted in a gift from 1990: a night-blooming cereus flower, given to her by another artist. Unlike most plants, the cereus saves its most brilliant moment for midnight, blooming in darkness rather than daylight. Campos-Pons lived with the plant for years, waiting for those rare nights when it would open. That waiting taught her something about the artist's life itself.
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Start Your News Detox"Living with the plant for those many years, waiting for the blossom to happen was a lesson that inscribed in me such an admiration about almost a parallel to the journey of an artist," she told ARTnews. "You work, you work, you water your ideas. You keep working. Just because of the love of making it and if you're passionate enough and consistent, you're going to see the blossom."
The bronze awards echo that same shape and philosophy. Campos-Pons partnered with Modern Art Foundry in Queens to cast them, creating physical objects that carry meaning beyond the moment of winning. For Campos-Pons herself, the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award recognized that Brooklyn Museum show—the exhibition that shifted how American institutions see her work.
This year's other winners include Claudia Alarcón & Silät (Emerging Artist), Wafaa Bilal (Established Artist), Ralph Lemon (Lifetime Achievement), Jack Whitten (Historical Artist), plus two institutional honors: "Legacies: Asian American Art Movements" at 80WSE and "Bowls, Boxes, Plates & Vessels" at Parker Gallery.
By turning the awards themselves into art, Campos-Pons has done something quietly radical: she's made the recognition inseparable from the work. The trophy isn't separate from the practice—it's part of the practice. The blossom is the journey.
