Belkis Ayón (1967-1999) Contemporary Cuban Printmaker. Specialized in the technique of Collography, creating monumental prints, inspired by the legends, myths, and rituals of the Abakuá Secret Society, creating a breathtaking artistic iconography for this religion, that had been never seen before in Cuban art. Belkis Ayón. Mythologies Bildmuseet Umea, Sweden May 23 – November 11, 2025 Collection

NKAME: A RETROSPECTIVE OF THE CUBAN PRINTMAKER BELKIS AYÓN (1967-1999) AT MUSEO DEL BARRIO, NEW YORK. May 26, 2017 Yadira Leyva Ayón © Belkis Ayón Estate The exhibition Nkame: A Retrospective of the Cuban Printmaker Belkis Ayón will be inaugurated at Museo del Barrio in New York on June 13th. This will be the second venue to host the artist's first personal exhibition at an institution in the United States. The exhibition brings together 48 works, a documentary by the American filmmaker Sun Meidia and an interview with Belkis Ayón conducted by the journalist Ines Anselmi in 1993, visualized with images of the artist and her work. The exhibition, organized by the Belkis Ayón Estate and Museo del Barrio, is curated by Cristina Vives. It will be open to the public until November 5, 2017. PREVIOUS NEWS NEXT NEWS

BELKIS AYÓN ESTATE FOUNDATION Created by Dra. Katia Ayón Manso, in 2003, the Estate has set itself as its main objectives: • Promote the artist's plastic work • Preserve and restore printed works • Preserve and restore matrices • Creation of the Ayón Space Opening of the exhibition Nkame: A Retrospective of the Cuban printmaker, Belkis Ayón (1967-1999), Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, Texas, United States, 2018 ACHIEVEMENTS Since the creation of the Estate, the work of Belkis Ayón has been present in innumerable solo and personal exhibitions of a national and international nature, which shows the importance of her work for Cuban and universal culture. The BELKIS AYÓN AWARD was given on the occasion of the VII National Printmaking Encounter that convenes the Experimental Graphic Workshop of Havana and in recognition of the valuable teaching work carried out by the artist, it was decided to award a prize among the competing works of the students of the second year of the San Alejandro from the National Academy of Plastic Arts. In 2009 we held the first anthological exhibition of the artist in the Convent of San Francisco de Asís, Old Havana. In 2010 we carried out a very significant and transcendental project for her work of art, the book Nkame. Belkis Ayón, produced by the Turner Publishing House in Madrid, and the participation of important researchers and art critics such as José Veigas, Cristina Vives, David Mateo, Lázara Menéndez, Orlando Hernández, Eugenio Valdés, and others who exalted with a great vision the engravings of the artist. Since 2016, the exhibition Nkame has toured different cities in the United States in successful presentations, receiving an excellent reception from the American public. With the curatorship of Cristina Vives and the management of the tour by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, California. Fowler Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles, California. 2016 - 2017 Museo del Barrio, New York, New York. 2017. Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri. 2017. Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, Texas, 2018 Scottsdale, Museum of Contemporary Art, Scottsdale, Arizona. 2018 - 2019 Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, Illinois. 2020 (Closed earlier to the public due to the COVID-19 pandemic) Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon. 2021 Inauguration of Nkame: Belkis Ayón (1967-1999) Retrospective Exhibition, Convent of San Francisco de Asís, Old Havana, Havana, Cuba, 2009 Opening of the Nkame Exhibition: A Retrospective of the Cuban printmaker, Belkis Ayón (1967-1999), Museo del Barrio , New York, New York, United States, 2017 PROJECTIONS Future projects are based on continuing to disseminate the legacy of Belkis to transcend among future generations of artists and make printmaking a greater art that occupies the place it deserves as a manifestation of the plastic arts.

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Belkis Ayón. Mythologies May 23 – November 11, 2025 Bildmuseet, Sweden Bildmuseet proudly presents Belkis Ayón / Mythologies, the first Nordic exhibition dedicated to the work of renowned Cuban artist Belkis Ayón (1967-1999). This show highlights key pieces from her career, spanning from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s. Ayón pioneered the technique of collography, pushing its expressive limits and expanding its formats. Her monumental works draw inspiration from the Abakuá, a secret Afro-Cuban brotherhood whose mythology and symbolism shaped her artistic production. Through her bold reinterpretations, Ayón unveils the power of myths, radically challenging their narratives and creating a unique visual universe. The exhibition is a collaborative project between Bildmuseet and The Gund (Kenyon College, Ohio, USA), with the support of Belkis Ayón Estate (Havana, Cuba) and Modern Art Oxford (UK). For more information, please visit Bildmuseet website

Belkis Ayón. The preamble to an infinite journey to earth. Norberto Marrero December 1, 1999 © Extramuros, 1, December 1999, pp. 25-26 For us, weary of the tumult and bad nights, reaching Alamar (land of promise) meant, among other things, being able to verify that there was still a full place, devoid of hatred and betrayal; a castle where we could exercise ourselves in the greatest and clearest spiritual tranquility. Then Belkis would appear with her enormous eyes of an Egyptian goddess, she ushered us in, and no one dared to let go of her spirit anymore, and we would be left hanging comfortably by her smile, her contagious optimism. I see Belkis as that mysteriously invulnerable woman, ready to offer us the best spaghetti in Havana and the clearest beer, capable of satiating the appetite, thirst, and fatigue of the most demanding traveler; I see her there with her kind and enthusiastic face, giving each of us a torrent of affection and vitality. When I met her in San Alejandro, I was just another student in the evening course with an avid interest in printmaking. She was already the artist that everyone admired, a teacher of two groups of students in the day course, quite numerous. With somewhat excessive persistence, in which I silently slipped away among her disciples and patiently waited for each moment of respite to ask her any technical or conceptual concerns, to which she responded without the slightest qualm, without the slightest suspicion. At the end of my four years of studies we had become very good friends, and by chance, almost always unpredictable, she ended up being the opponent of my thesis. I remember her as one of those essential teachers, very concerned for her students from San Alejandro, to whom she gave all her knowledge about engraving, including very expensive materials that she managed to buy on her travels, or others that were donated to her by foreign friends; catalogs and all kinds of information that he managed to collect. For a long time, the Chair of Engraving of Saint Alexander survived thanks to his unrelenting interest. She was an irreplaceable friend, and I can't stop thinking about her eyes, with her always encouraging words. For Cuban culture, impeccable work will remain, overflowing with perfection and constancy, of exquisite elegance. A path opened by someone who dedicated a large part of his days to specially promoting Cuban engraving, with unquestionable seriousness and professionalism. For Cuban culture, it is the gross and useless loss of an artist who with her scarce thirty-two years managed to climb the highest levels of national and international culture in the plastic arts, with an astonishingly mature work, of great originality and spiritual depth. . For those of us who loved her, for those of us who were by her side, something more intimate, more imperishable, will remain. We will be left with his goodness, his disinterested way of giving himself, his concern for everything that meant the well-being of his family and his friends, which was the same; his desire to always achieve a fair and happy future for artists and friends. I remember now when he received one of the prizes from the Puerto Rico Engraving Biennial, one of the most important graphic arts events on the continent. It was a moderately happy surprise for her; I could assure you that he received it with a certain amount of modesty. However, I very well remember her inordinate joy and pride when Abel (1) visited La Huella Múltiple, and with her, he toured each of the exhibition halls, which he had appreciated in their exceptional quality. I looked at his eyes and could perceive endless wonderful thoughts, plans for engraving, opportunities never latent before as up to that moment, and then we remembered all the difficulties to carry out the event, the early mornings of work at the UNEAC putting together the catalogs, the money that was not enough and that much of it came from his pocket; the difficulty of assembling many of the pieces, the fatigue, the sleep, and although we always had the conviction that La Huella ... would cost us a lot, now, while we talked about Abel and all that, we knew deep inside that the effort would not it had been in vain. Her work as Vice President of Plastic Arts at UNEAC, for many of the engraving artists who knew her, was a saving dream; there was someone who gave engraving its true importance, such a laborious technique and so much tradition in Cuban culture. Belkis was not only a very responsible artist but also was absolutely affordable for any artist, not only for the most important but also, since they paid special attention, to those less known, less "privileged". He had a special agglutinating capacity, thanks to which he carried out any event, counting not only on the engravers but also on the sculptors, the photographers ... To all this he gave himself with absolute devotion, leaving aside, even, his own work of creation. Today, while making the same trip that I did so many times, I think about the time that Eliseo left us (2), and I cannot conceive of including Belkis in that immaterial, insubstantial time; I try to understand their essences, their latitudes, and I cannot manage their body and spirit through those labyrinths. For some, it is the unspoken and irreversible end. For others it is one of her many trips, one of which inexplicably sometimes she returned very depressed, even having done very well professionally. For me, it is neither one nor the other. I still know that he will be there, in his castle (and ours), waiting for the first traveler, thirsty, spreading his arms. I know this is absolutely true and I don't want to be fooled. We share too many joys, too many sorrows, too many truths, and although for all this means a selfish and terribly devastating loss, we will try to be calm. I wonder about the things that we did not say to each other, because of how dark no one perceived, about the things that we did not understand, and then I think: How else would I see suicide, if not as a prelude of a fervent banquet, and tell each other why it would be worth very little to strip ourselves of our sardonic sorcery as if all our anguish ended there, where the water runs transparent and the salt shines like gold vomited by a goat. How else would we see emptiness. One and the other are voracious objects that our exhausted youth possesses, a relic of knowledge that is spent so inevitably like our children. Love accompanies bodies when they die. A fine line divides the stones and desire. Patience. Before the yew tree, patience. After the desserts, slow and infinite patience. Then I arrive at the door of that wonderful castle. When it opens the door she appears, says "hello", and her huge eyes pull me, Apprehending me for all eternity (1) - Abel Prieto, Minister of Culture of the Republic of Cuba. (N. of the publisher) (2) - It refers to the Cuban poet Eliseo Diego and his poem "Testament", where he bequeaths to future generations "the time, all the time." (N. of the publisher) PREVIOUS article back to texts

BEHIND THE VEIL OF A MYTH NEW BOOK ABOUT THE WORK OF BELKIS AYÓN October 22, 2018 Yadira Leyva Ayón © Belkis Ayón Estate Behind the veil of a myth, with texts by the curator Cristina Vives, was produced by the Station Museum of Contemporary Art and the Belkis Ayón Estate. The book covers the most significant moments of her artistic career and offers an interesting virtual tour of the exhibition Nkame: A Retrospective of the Cuban Printmaker Belkis Ayón (1967-1999). The book is available at AMAZON PREVIOUS NEWS NEXT NEWS

THE CALLALOO ART & CULTURE IN THE AFRICAN DIASPORA MAGAZINE, ILLUSTRATED ITS COVER WITH THE PIECE LA CENA, 1988 BY BELKIS AYÓN January 26, 2015 Yadira Leyva Ayón © Callaloo Art & Culture in the African Diaspora Magazine Issue 4 of the Callaloo Art & Culture in the African Diaspora Magazine illustrated its cover with the piece La Cena de 1988 by Belkis Ayón, of which we can find a dossier with more of her works and specific aspects of her artistic life. With interviews, historical articles, reviews, and dossiers of visual artists, the publication presents different aspects of the culture generated by the African diaspora in the American world. PREVIOUS NEWS NEXT NEWS

AT THE HEAT OF THE THOUGHT. WORKS FROM THE DAROS LATINOAMERICA COLLECTION Santander Group City Art Room, Madrid, Spain . February 3 - April 30, 2010 Director Daros Latinamerica Collection: Hans Michael Herzog The Daros Collection, one of the most important contemporary Ibero-American art collections in the world, arrives in Spain with an exhibition of 70 works and 22 artists presenting the current Ibero-American art from the aesthetic, conceptual, and allegorical aspects. The exhibition proposes a permanent interaction between the work and the public in a true challenge for the senses. “At the heat of the thought. Works from the Daros Latinamerica Collection ”, is the title of the exhibition that, from February 3 to April 30, 2010, is being organized by the Banco Santander Foundation in the Santander Group City Art Room. The Director of the Banco Santander Foundation, Borja Baselga, and the Director of the Daros Latinamerica Collection, Hans Michael Herzog, accompanied by several artists participating in the exhibition such as Julio Le Parc, Humberto Vélez, Oswaldo Macia Gómez, or Los Carpinteros inaugurated the exhibition together with the Commissioner, Katrin Steffen. “It is not just another exhibition,” said Borja Baselga, Director of the Banco Santander Foundation at the press conference, “each of the pieces has an intellectual, social background, a different way of approaching reality, the imaginary, to the extreme situations of our society ”. There are twenty-two artists and seventy creations that not only make up a selection of the highlights of the Daros Latinamerica Collection - the most important in Europe in contemporary Ibero-American art - but also reflect its essence in a spectacular assembly that continuously dialogues with the public through each and every one of his proposals from the conceptual to the aesthetic and allegorical, as Liliana Porter proposes so that we become transformers of her work by tearing it off and throwing it to the ground, constituting capricious forms. Also, noteworthy, for the first time in the Daros Collection is the exhibition of the work of José Damasceno, The Next Presage, Leandro Erlich, The Doors, various engravings by Liliana Porter, and the performance drawings by Marta Minujín. This is a journey through the classical masters of contemporary art from the Ibero-American continent from Mexico to Argentina passing through Brazil in a space of three thousand square meters. Prestigious authors not only aesthetic but also symbolic and committed, such as Carlos Amorales, Belkis Ayón, Los Carpinterios, José Damasceno, Gonzalo Díaz, Leandro Erlich, León Ferrari, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Jorge Macchi, Oswaldo Macia Gómez, Marco Maggi, Cildo Meireles, Marta Minujín, Vik Muniz, Óscar Muñoz, Julio Le Parc, Liliana Porter, José Alejandro Restrepo, Miguel Ángel Rojas, Betsabé Romero, Doris Salcedo and Humberto Vélez. A review of the extensive range of proposals that includes contemporary Ibero-American art - visual and auditory arts, virtual reality, social symbolism, modes of cognition and perception - from the most veteran present authors, León Ferrari (1920) and Julio Le Parc (1928 ) to the youngest such as Leandro Erlich (1973), Los Carpinteros (1971) or Carlos Amorales (1970). The title of the exhibition, At the heat of the thought, comes from a fascinating work by Chilean Gonzalo Díaz inspired by the 18th-century German poet, Novalis, specifically in the words which he begins his collection of fragments known as Blütenstaub (Pollen grains): "We look everywhere for the unconditioned and we find only things." The appointment is written by means of electrical resistances placed on ceramic tiles and it is heated at regular intervals until it turns red hot. This continuous interaction is what makes this show and its assembly unique. A TOUR THROUGH THE EXHIBITION Ayate Car, by the Mexican Betsabé Romero, part happening and part installation is a Ford Victoria car decorated and upholstered in dry roses that dialogues in the foreground of the Room with the majestic tapestry of Brussels, The exaltation pf the Arts, woven at the end of the reign of Felipe IV in the workshop of Jan Leyniers and belonging to the Santander Collection. Ayate Car develops that committed aspect of Ibero-American art, by sending the artist this car from the 1950s from Mexico City to Tijuana, causing the illegal entry of the vehicle into the United States and immediate deportation, leaving the car in "no man's land" of the border as a symbol against the mistreatment of illegal Mexican immigration. Julio Le Parc, one of the classic voices of Ibero-American art, was inspired by sources outside the art system, using movement and artificial light as materials in his Lumières alternées, a rhythmic pulsation of lights and shadows with a view to transforming architecture in a moving force field. His photokinetic experiments allow him to analyze the visual process. Leandro Erlich, one of the youngest Argentine authors in the show, investigates optical illusions from a new perspective, using them as an artistic medium. In his installation The Doors, the public is faced with a series of locked doors, through whose cracks and keyholes the light filters in abundance. One can only open them. In Superficial Tension, the Mexican Rafael Lozano-Hemmer confronts the audience with a gigantic human eye that, through a monitoring system, records the movement that occurs around him, representing the intimate exchange between the work and the person who is contemplating it. The engravings of the Argentinean Liliana Porter show that the interaction between the public, the work, and the artist constituted the fundamental element of an aesthetic that emerged in the 1960s, whose purpose was to develop new forms of art beyond institutions and categories. In the middle of that decade, Porter founded the New York Graphic Workshop, a collective initiative aimed at disseminating works of art in series. The most paradigmatic example of this concept was To Be Wrinkled and Thrown Away where the title itself is responsible for providing instructions for use. Of the different artistic fields handled in the exhibition, another Argentine, Marta Minujín, presents several drawings of her most relevant public activities - known internationally for her performances and happenings - with which since the 1960s she has been radically questioning the relationship between art and public. Thus, in 1983, for example, he built a scale model of the Parthenon in Buenos Aires, his hometown, using books that had been censored during the Argentine dictatorship, whose drawing is exhibited in this exhibition. León Ferrari, the oldest artist on the tour, is often inspired by political motives, and his projects reveal another aspect of rampant urbanization and the resulting chaos. The series exhibited includes traffic arteries, cars, and stereotypical figures such as visions or caricatures of reality and was created in the early 1980s in São Paulo. Brazilian Cildo Meireles captures the symbiotic relationship of madness and reason in an enigmatic and global image mounted with rings and chains. Vik Muniz's WWW (World Map) —a world map made up entirely of out-of-date computer parts— wants to warn us in his work that the global network becomes the mere sum of its unconnected, useless components, ultimately seeking new definitions of the photographic media. The Cuban artists that form Los Carpinteros cooperative, resort to crazy drawings and objects to sketch a private world as a paraphrase of the present, sprinkling it with humorous allusions and abounding in sarcastic comments about everyday life in Cuba, such as their Wooden and Metal Umbrella. For its part, the also Cuban Belkis Ayón is inspired by the realization of her engravings as artistic meditations on the legends of the Abakuá, an Afro-Cuban secret society dedicated exclusively to men. The radio transmission of the exhibition space itself of a fictitious horse race incites the Panamanian Humberto Vélez in La Carrera (classic VII Biennial of Panama) to criticism and parody of competitive social systems. For his audio installation, titled Something Going On Above My Head, Colombian Oswaldo Macia Gómez composed a symphony based on the song of two thousand birds from four continents. He is interested in the development of a universal language as a challenge to perception. The installation on the Hotbed floor, by the Uruguayan Marco Maggi, resembles instructions to perceive slowness and silence, a kind of Zen garden with minimal creations from microscopic precision incisions made on snowy paper. The work invites the viewer to discover a new sculptural universe. Carlos Amorales has been working on his own language to express speech coding and intuitive perception, continually expanding the digital archive of images that have become his iconographic background. The Liquid Archive motifs — hybrid creatures, masks, airplanes, etc. — produce surreal and threatening parallel worlds. In his O presságio Seguinte (experience on the visibility of a dynamic substance), José Damasceno addresses the changing dimensions of a world in constant motion. The installation gives priority to proximity and encounter using physical stimuli (space, shapes, materials) to lead its viewers to the nodal point of the interpretive threads. Another Colombian, Oscar Muñoz, carries out an exhaustive analysis of the processes of perception and our ability to remember with Breath, where when we exhale our breath on glass the face of a disappeared person in Colombia emerges. Likewise, in the work of José Alejandro Restrepo, the role of death as a counterpart of life and co-architect is also revealed. Jorge Macchi fights against oblivion by providing press articles on murders in a fragile collage and emphasizing that news that readers often forget as soon as they turn the page. Placed horizontally, the articles finally enjoy space to narrate their tragedies. Marginalization and hegemony, as well as the effects of war, are the main artistic concerns of Miguel Ángel Rojas and Doris Salcedo. Rojas presents in large format black and white photographs a mutilated soldier of the Colombian army, whose posture reminds us of the famous David by Miguel Ángel. Doris Salcedo transforms political and social processes into disturbing sculptures - November 6 - that speak about desire and loss, of presence and absence, like this spectacular assembly of chairs and a room. THE DAROS LATINAMERICA COLLECTION More than 1,300 pieces and 100 artists make up the Daros Latinamerica Collection, with a European headquarters in Zurich and an American branch in Rio de Janeiro. The collection was instituted in 2000 under the direction of Hans Michael Herzog and it includes the majority of contemporary artists from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego who have or will have an important impact on contemporary art from twenty years ago until now. Also, the collection presents emblematic pieces from the sixties and seventies and both Latin Americans residing in Europe and Europeans who have their definitive residence in Latin America. The oldest work in the Collection is a Torres García from 1938. Herzog affirms “the collection is as varied as the age of the artists, and what we want is to contribute to a better understanding of Ibero-American art outside its borders” since what fascinated him is that in these countries, "You think more intensely." Ruth Schmidheiny is the owner of this Collection. Participating artists: Carlos Amorales, Belkis Ayón, Los Carpinteros, José Damasceno, Gonzalo Díaz, Leandro Erlich, León Ferrari, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Jorge Machi, Oswaldo Macia, Marco Maggi, Cildo Meireles, Marta Minujín, Vik Muniz, Oscar Muñoz, Julio Le Parc, Liliana Porter, José Alejandro Restrepo, Miguel Angel Rojas, Betsabeé Romero, Doris Salcedo, Hunberto Vélez.

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RESLESSNESS / RESLESSNESS Belkis Ayón Manso When Darrel Couturier sent to request by fax the title for this exhibition he still did not have it, he had not even thought about it, to be honest. That day I had a great commitment to attend the opening of the first personal exhibition of two of my students. After finishing my work as a spectator and as a guardian angel (teacher), I went to my friend Cristina's house where I would meet Rafa who would bring the letter to Darrel with the title of the exhibition. When I left this other, nothing occurred to me - I entered a state of desperation imperceptible to the eye - again showing my moderate personality, less to laugh and do great colography. I thought about the works that I had already finished and I asked myself what feelings they have in common, since in general I have been working on the subject for years - and I associate it a little with what I have been feeling in recent months, a great UNREST, something that almost unconsciously my work began to appear. As, I previously mentioned the subject that I have been working on for years, since I began to study in the 3 year of the San Alejandro Academy, it is one of the components of Cuban culture on the African side, the carabalíes and of them, the Secret Society Abakúa, made up only of men, which emerged in the 1930s in the 19th century in Cuba. Above all, I intend to give my vision, my point of view as an observer, presenting in a synthetic way the aesthetic, plastic and poetic aspect that I have discovered in Abakúa relating it to the questioning of the nature of man, with personal experiences, that feeling that sometimes it captures and we do not know how to define them, with those fleeting emotions, with the spiritual incorporating symbols from other cultures that I use to express my ideas with greater richness and quality. I work with characters such as the leopard man, identifying with him the power, the composition, the aggression of society, a male who sacrifices Sikán, a woman who discovers the secret and dies for the sake of it passing to men and not disappearing. The secret consisted of a voice, SACRED VOICE, produced by a FISH discovered by her when she returned from the river, the fish was the reincarnation of Old Obón, Tanzé, of Abasí, the Supreme God. The transmission of the sacred voice was finally settled on the hide of a goat vibrating on the sacred drum of EKUE. My images come to them through the technical colography of engraving that consists of a kind of collage printed with a wide variety of materials placed and glued on a cardboard support. Sikán, a woman who prevails in the works presented because she, like me, lived and lives through me in uneasiness, insistently looking for a way out. Belkis Ayon Havana, Cuba, January 1998 BACK TO REVELATIONS NEXT ARTICLE

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