When Cuban
artist Belkis Ayón died in 1999, she was only 32 years old, but she left behind
a body of work that belied her age, comprising huge and striking prints that had
already received international critical acclaim.
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| Belkis at the Havana Galerie, Zurich, 1999. (Photo by Werner Gadliger) |
Now, for the
first time, a museum in the United States is hosting a solo retrospective of
her work, with a view to making the public more aware of this singular artist who
reflected Afro-Cuban traditions, the history of contemporary printmaking and
the challenges that her country faced in the 1990s.
Titled Nkame:
A Retrospective of Cuban Printmaker Belkis Ayón, the exhibition opens Oct. 2
and runs until Feb. 12, 2017, at the Fowler Museum at UCLA in California. It presents 44 prints that the organizers say “encompass
a wide range of the artist’s graphic production from 1984 until her untimely
passing [she committed suicide] in 1999".
According to
the Fowler, Ayón “mined the founding narrative of the Afro-Cuban fraternal
society called Abakuá to create an independent and powerful visual iconography”.
Abakuá is an all-male Afro-Cuban brotherhood brought by enslaved Africans to
the western port cities of Cuba in the early 1800s.
“A brief
synopsis of the founding myth of Abakuá begins with Sikán, a princess who
inadvertently trapped a fish in a container she used to draw water from the
river,” according to the Fowler.
“The
unexpected loud bellowing of the fish was the mystical ‘voice’ of Abakuá, and
Sikán was the first to hear it. Because women were not permitted this sacred knowledge,
the local diviner swore Sikán to secrecy. Sikán, however, revealed her secret
to her fiancé, and because of her indiscretion she was condemned to die.”
 |
| Belkis Ayon, La consagracion II (The Consecration II), 1991, collograph. Collection of the Belkis Ayon Estate. |
However, in
Ayón’s work, Sikán remains alive, and her story and representation figure prominently
in the prints. At one point, the artist wrote: “I see myself as Sikán, in a
certain way an observer, an intermediary and a revealer… Sikán is a
transgressor, and as such I see her, and I see myself.”
The title word
Nkame means “greeting” and “praise” in the language of Abakuá, and reflects a posthumous
tribute and career overview, says Dr. Katia Ayón, the artist’s sister who helps
to manage the Belkis Ayón Estate, a co-organizer of the exhibition with the
Fowler Museum.
Katia and her
daughter Yadira travelled from Cuba to Los Angeles to be at the opening and
will participate in talks about Belkis’ life and work, Katia said in an
interview.
Born in Havana
in 1967, Belkis Ayón attended the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts and then
the Higher Institute of Art / Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA). She held her first
solo exhibition in Havana in 1988, at age 21, before graduating from the
Institute in 1991.
Two years after her graduation, she became a professor of engraving at the San Alejandro Academy and
also at ISA, and that same year, 1993, she participated in the 16th Venice Biennale
and won the international prize at the International Graphics Biennale in Maastricht,
the Netherlands.
 |
| Installation view at the Fowler Museum. All works: Belkis Ayon. Collection of the Belkis Ayon Estate. (Photo by Jose A. Figueroa) |
The Museum of
Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, invited her to participate in the Kwangju
Biennial in South Korea in 1997, and some of her works were subsequently acquired
by MOCA and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. During the last year of her
life, she had four residencies in the U.S. and solo exhibitions at various
galleries and institutions. She committed
suicide in 1999 at the age of 32.
Over her
career, Ayón became an expert in the technique of collography, a printing process
in which a “variety of materials of various textures and absorbencies are
collaged onto a cardboard matrix and then run through the press”.
The Fowler
says that Ayón employed a “deliberately austere palette of subtle tones of
black, white, and gray”, which add “drama and mystery to her narratives”. She produced many of the works at large scale
by joining multiple printed sheets.
Cristina Vives,
the guest curator of the exhibition, told SWAN that her aim is not only to show
the artist’s relationship with Abakuá, but also to highlight how Ayón utilized
these traditional themes to articulate certain concerns.
 |
| (L-R) Cristina Vives, Dr. Katia Ayon and Yadira Ayon with (left) Nlloro (Weeping), 1991, collograph, and (right) Resurreccion (Resurrection), 1998, collograph. All works: Belkis Ayon. Collection of the Belkis Ayon Estate. Installation view at Fowler Museum UCLA, 2016. (Photo by Jose A. Figueroa) |
“She used the
traditions and history behind Abakuá to express something else,” Vives said in
a telephone interview. “The 1990s were a tough time for people in Cuba, after
the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, and it was also a difficult time to express
opinions as artists. So artists found ways to talk about what was happening in
our daily lives.
“My main goal
is to attract the public’s attention to her intentions rather than to her use
of the traditions and history of Abakuá,” Vives added. “It’s also to bring back
Belkis’ work to the audience because time has passed and the perspective is now
different.”
Vives said
that Ayón produced around 200 different images, from the time she began
printmaking as a high-school student. In 2009, a decade after her death, Havana
hosted a retrospective comprising 83 prints. The show at the Fowler is a version
of this exhibition, but reduced in size.
“The overall
presentation is almost the same, with beautiful installations because Belkis
worked on such a huge scale,” Vives said.
Marla Berns, the
Shirley and Ralph Shapiro Director of the Fowler Museum, said that Ayón’s
contributions in her particular area of print-making are noteworthy.
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| Belkis Ayon, Sin Titulo (Sikan con chivo) [Untitled (Sikan with Goat)] 1993, collograph. Collection of the Belkis Ayon Estate. |
“For a black
Cuban woman, both her ascendency in the contemporary printmaking world and her
investigation of a powerful all-male brotherhood were notable and bold,” said
Berns.
She noted
that Nkame follows a lineage of
Fowler exhibitions that have explored artistic representations and evocations
of African-inspired religions in the Diaspora, such as Sacred Arts of Haitian
Vodou (1995) and Transcultural Pilgrim: Three Decades of Work by José Bedia
(2011).
“This is an
important moment to spotlight the aesthetically stunning and poetically
resonant prints of Belkis Ayón, especially with today’s heightened attention on
Cuba and Cuban culture, and the historic reopening of diplomatic relations
between the U.S. and Cuba,” Berns added.
The
Fowler Museum is an institution devoted to exploring the arts and cultures of
Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and the Americas. More information at: http://www.fowler.ucla.edu/
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