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. Collection

Fundación Los Carbonell y Estate Belkis Ayón presentan en Cuba el libro Nkame Mafimba e inauguran la exposición Mi alma y yo te queremos . La Habana, septiembre de 2025 – El próximo 11 de septiembre en la Galería Salón Blanco (Basílica y Convento de San Francisco de Asís, Oficina del Historiador de la Ciudad de La Habana) tendrán lugar dos momentos especiales dedicados a la artista Belkis Ayón. A las 3:00 pm, el Estate Belkis Ayón y la Fundación Los Carbonell presentarán en Cuba, por primera vez, Nkame Mafimba , segunda y actualizada edición del catálogo razonado de la artista, publicado por Editorial Turner (Madrid) en 2024. La presentación contará con la participación de la Dra. Lázara Menéndez (profesora universitaria), Ernesto Leyva (director del Estate Belkis Ayón), y las curadoras Corina Matamoros y Sandra García Herrera. Posteriormente, a las 4:00 pm, se inaugurará la exposición colectiva Mi alma y yo te queremos, organizada por la Fundación Los Carbonell, el proyecto malaYerba y el Estate Belkis Ayón, bajo la curaduría de Sandra García Herrera y con la asistencia curatorial de Camila Marín. Un homenaje a Belkis Ayón El título de la exposición se inspira en un grabado de la artista y funciona como un gesto colectivo de afecto y admiración hacia ella. Participan artistas que fueron colegas, discípulos y continuadores de su legado, junto con jóvenes grabadores vinculados al proyecto Espacio Ayón. La muestra incluye un conjunto de impresiones y matrices de la propia Belkis, cedidas por su Estate. Artistas: Ángel Ramírez / Sandra Ramos / Ibrahim Miranda / Abel Barroso / Isary Paulet / Antonio Martorell / Eduardo Roca (Choco) / Juan Carlos Rivero / Lidzie Alvisa / Yamilys Brito / Frank E. Martínez / Janette Brossard / Norberto Marrero / Anyelmaidelín Calzadilla / Octavio Irving / Aliosky García / Orlando Montalván / Osmeivy Ortega / Marcel Molina Una fecha simbólica La jornada se realiza el 11 de septiembre, día en que se cumplen 26 años del fallecimiento de Belkis Ayón, y coincide con el natalicio de Eusebio Leal Spengler, historiador de la ciudad y principal impulsor de la preservación del Convento de San Francisco de Asís, actual sede de la Galería Salón Blanco. La exposición se mantendrá abierta hasta noviembre del presente año. Con esta nueva muestra la Fundación Los Carbonell reafirma su vocación de crear espacios donde los grandes referentes del arte cubano vuelvan a encontrarse con las nuevas generaciones de artistas, curadores e investigadores. Belkis Ayón (La Habana, 1967-1999) Figura esencial del grabado contemporáneo cubano y espíritu aglutinador de su generación. Graduada de la Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro y del Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA), donde también ejerció la docencia, dejó una obra marcada por la innovación técnica y la hondura simbólica. Su legado abrió caminos en la estampa cubana y sigue convocando a quienes compartieron con ella el taller, la enseñanza y la amistad.

WITCHES, BUT ALSO WARLOCKS Museo de Arte Maníaco, Colonial house by Alfredo Ramos, on Línea 106, Havana, Cuba. October 26, 2014 Under the title of Witches, but also warlocks, the Aglutinador space and the Maniac Art Museum these days shows a sui generis exhibitions that blends art with religious rites and beliefs from different parts of the planet. Celebrating its twenty years, this space for creation and exhibition directed by the artist Sandra Ceballos, brought together almost fifty people in this exhibition where spirits, amulets, orishas, paranormal events and energy are the protagonists. Artists, esoteric astrologers, researchers, healers, ritualists, believers, practitioners, mystics, both Cuban and foreign, invoke magic, sensuality and spirituality through various techniques, styles, textures, genres, and both conventional and experimental expressive possibilities. The exhibition, made up of 38 works, can be seen until the end of this month in the colonial house of Alfredo Ramos, on Línea 106, permanent headquarters of the Museum of Manic Art in Havana.

BOOK NKAME WINS SECOND PRIZE FOR THE BEST BOOKS PUBLISHED IN SPAIN IN 2010 October 11, 2010 Ministry of Culture of Spain © http://www.europapress.es The Ministry of Culture of Spain has granted the Awards for the Best Edited Books in 2010. These awards do not have an economic endowment but are highly valued by publishers for the recognition and prestige given to their editorial work, as well as for the dissemination that it entails, being included in the book promotion actions and exhibited at the main national and international fairs. The awarded categories include: Art, Bibliophilia, Facsimiles, Children and Youth, General and Outreach Works The jury has evaluated 318 works in total, included in five thematic groups. These are the awarded works: Art books First prize: The toys of the avant-garde, by VV.AA., published by the Fundación Museo Picasso Málaga y Legado Paul Christine and Bernard Ruiz-Picasso; Produced by Ediciones El Viso. Second prize: Nkame. Belkis Ayón, from VV.AA., edited by Turner Publicaciones, SL Third prize: Miguel Hernández. 25 illustrated poems, poems by Miguel Hernández, illustrations by various authors, edited by Kalandraka Ediciones Andalucía. The Jury has been chaired by Mónica Fernández, Deputy Director General for the Promotion of Spanish Books, Reading and Literature. They have acted as members Teresa Mezquita for the National Library of Spain, Andrés Fernández for the Federation of Publishers Guilds of Spain, Manuel Vacas for the Business Federation of Graphic Industries of Spain, Augusto Jurado for the Emeritus Graphics Club, Natividad Correas and Rocío San Claudio at the proposal of the general director of the Spanish Book, Reading and Literature and Marta Sáenz Bascones, an expert official of the Ministry of Culture. PREVIOUS NEWS NEXT NEWS

I ALWAYS RETURN Havana Gallery, Havana, Cuba November 2000 Tribute Exhibition General coordination: Katia Ayón and Dalia González Texts: Yolanda Wood, Hilda Ma. Rodríguez, David Mateo Sponsor: Gan Gallery, Tokyo, Japan. SponsorS: National Council of Plastic Arts Wifredo Lam Contemporary Art Center National Union of Writers Artists of Cuba Cuban Fund of Cultural Assets VIRTUOSE OF LABYRINTHS From the same source of her power Their wounds come from Adrianne rich To Belkis Ayón We believed you to be a stone with an eternal edge, Unconquered Legends Challenge And we abandon ourselves to the lightning of your laughter, To the gravity of your image. Virtuous of labyrinths that she devoured with her hands, Persephone without temples or diaries, You left us only the crumbs of your cracks And the sob of a fleeing cortege. We thought you were a sumptuous abode of the tall word And we entrusted ourselves to the towers that wavered your iron silhouette We no longer listen to the whirlwind that stirred your waves, We do not notice the mist, nor the fragility of your shadow, And we get caught up in spasm and helplessness. We loved you the owner of the unfathomable magic, Of forges and bonfires But we didn't know about your bellows In the deep place of the unspeakable. A single blow burst out of grief, Anguish struck, erased the tracks And the silence and the pain left us Of the one who is still waiting. Hilda Maria Rodriguez September 1999 BACK OVER THE SENSES Once, naively, I thought I was penetrating the reserved universe of Belkis Ayón; I imagined that I could add to my curriculum of author revelations the unpublished fact that she did not know how to draw very well, and that it was her face and body that had always served as patterns for the elaboration of her images. The moment Belkis made that unusual confession to me, which I made public in La Gaceta de Cuba, I was able to allow myself to be seduced by the gesture of deference that she herself implied; although I also came to think that it was an attitude derived from a certain carelessness, a certain presumption, in someone who was not afraid to expose her imperfections because she had already entered the sacrosanct precinct of legitimation. I convinced myself in those days that her greatest expertise was then focused on knowing how to compensate for the lack of ability to carry out a precise sketch, a meticulous drawing, with the implementation of an impeccable, refined and strict collographic procedure in each phase of her particular method, and in which the impact of the composition fell fundamentally on a series of value and color effects. To all this was added, in my opinion, the suspicion of having known how to choose within the Cuban cultural heritage a legend little addressed by the plastic arts, in whose narrative nucleus the experienced woman the most deplorable of the principles: the absolute exclusion. By believing that I was breaking into the confidential space of Belkis Ayón's artistic production, the only thing I had actually managed to do with the appropriation of that news was timidly touch its vertices. I was not able to understand that this argument not only offered me the indispensable coordinates to unravel the devices that she used in the consummation of her works but also to be able to investigate the concerns and uncertainties that haunted her as a creator and individual. In other words, Belkis deposits in me, as perhaps she has done in other inquirers, the necessary indications for me to commit myself to develop a much deeper investigation, which would make the retaining wall demolish once and for all, the limit that I prefixed the difference between the public valuation of her work and her personal subsistence. Analyzing today the creation of this artist as a result of the unfortunate outcome of her life, it is presented to me in a very different way: much more humanized and visceral; stripped completely of the restraint implied by a technical concern; finally rescued from the desire to continue being legitimized as a project with a florist and almost anthropological spirit, without taking into account its purely existential foundation. I also realize that what I interpreted at the beginning as an absence of a definition, could now paradoxically become a reliable test of synthesis capacity. For if what seemed to interest her, was the use of the body as a depository model of dramatic force, it was logical to suppose that she eliminated everything superfluous, everything insignificant, in order to arrive at the scene of expression; it was enough then with a gesture, with a contortion, with a look ... When Belkis emphasizes the Sikan conflict, she seems to want to emphasize her own conflict. The cause of one was unfolding more and more until it became the cause of the other. The fantastic passage must have been the pretext, the excuse; and recreation with the figuration of the royal road to show the traces of anguish, of dissatisfaction that no one knew how to capture and dissolve, not even the beings closest to it. Despite the fact that some of us already felt a growing contradiction between the gloomy atmosphere, the excess of adversity that her works reflected, and the peaceful and optimistic character that she showed before others; even though, in the last days of her life, we forbid a very strange struggle to appear at times behind her gaze, a force something like between disturbed and apprehensive, which she knew how to hide very well with her inscrutable smile. David Mateo November 2000

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

David Castillo & Belkis Ayón Estate announce two major acquisitions of the artist's rare multi-panel works by The Museum of Modern Art, NY and National Gallery of Art, DC In collaboration with the artist's estate, David Castillo will present the first gallery solo exhibition of Ayón's work since her death in 1999, which will be on view from January 30 – April 25, 2024. On the occasion of the exhibition, the gallery is releasing a monograph on the artist featuring two historical interviews and selected key works, published by [NAME]. "I use collagraphy because it seems to me the most appropriate technique to express what I want to." Belkis Ayón, Resurrection , 1998, collagraph, 108.87 x 85 inches Belkis Ayón Resurrection 1998 Resurrección was acquired by The Museum of Modern Art at Art Basel in Basel / David Castillo (Booth D14). Between 1991 and 1998, Belkis Ayón made a series of large-format multi-panel collographs, chief among them, Resurrección (1998). Containing varied elements of the Abakuá and using Sikán as the central figure, Resurrección, depicts subjects, emergent and upright, foregrounded by a slumped male figure clad in symbolic head painting. Of the four main figures, Sikán punctuates the composition in hue and in gesture, tracing allegories of her myth across a personal autobiography. David Castillo Booth D14 at Art Basel in Basel 2023 Belkis Ayón, Untitled (Woman in Fetal Position), 1996, collagraph, 89 x 67 inches Belkis Ayón Untitled (Woman in fetal position) 1996 Untitled (Woman in Fetal Position) was acquired by National Gallery of Art at Art Basel in Miami Beach / David Castillo (Booth F34) Belkis Ayón's masterful collographs illustrate the sacred mythologies of the Abakuá, an Afro-Cuban belief system and secret society only men can join. Ayón's works depict teachings that were forbidden to her as a woman; Sikán—the only woman represented in the religion's pantheon is put to death for revealing Abakuán secrets. Ayón reimagined this figure's tragic story across her collographs, bringing them both—one human, one myth—together to navigate male-dominated worlds. David Castillo Booth F34 at Art Basel in Miami Beach 2022

Belkis Ayón at th e 34th São Paulo Biennal Although is dark, I still sign Design for the catalogue of the 34th São Paulo Biennial and some works included in the main exhibition July 5, 2021 Isachi Durruthy Peñalver © Belkis Ayón Estate The 34th edition of the Sao Paulo Biennial will feature the work of Belkis Ayón (Havana 1967-1999). The event, one of the most prestigious in the world and an indisputable reference for the art of our continent, will host 16 works by the renowned Cuban artist. In total 14 prints, one of them, large format, and two matrices, also large format, will be exhibited from September 4 to December 5, 2021, at the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion, located in Ibirapuera Park in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Belkis Ayón traced a renovating path for Latin American printmaking. Her peculiar aesthetic discourse grounded in the traditions of the Abakuá culture, her outstanding mastery of the collography technique, and her prolific work as a pedagogue made her one of the most prominent figures of 20th-century Cuban art. This is the first time that her work has been invited to participate in this notorious event, conceived as a polyphony of voices and points of view on contemporary artistic production. The 34th Biennial entitled Faz escuro mas eu canto [Although it's dark, I still sing] affirms the right to complexity and opacity, in expressions of art and culture, as well as in the identities of individuals and social groups, with a representation of 91 artists from 39 countries. The curatorial team is form by of Jacopo Crivelli Visconti, Paulo Miyada, Carla Zaccagnini, Francesco Stocchi and Ruth Estévez. The Cicillio Matarazzo, former Palace of Industry, also known as the Biennial Pavilion, is part of the original Ibirapuera Park complex in Sao Paulo and was designed by the famous Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer. For more information on the 34th Sao Paulo Biennial visit HERE the official page NEXT NEWS

BONDED BETWEEN THE ESOTERIC AND MANIC ART October 6, 2014 Cecilia Crespo © OnCuba Magazine Under the title of Witches, but also Warlocks, the Aglutinador space and the Maniac Art Museum these days exhibit a sui generis exhibition that blends art with rites and religious beliefs from different parts of the planet. Celebrating its twenty years, this space for creation and exhibition directed by the artist Sandra Ceballos, brought together nearly fifty people in this exhibition where spirits, amulets, orishas, paranormal events, and energy are the protagonists. Artists, esoterics, astrologers, researchers, healers, ritualists, believers, practitioners, mystics, both Cuban and foreign, invoke magic, sensuality, and spirituality through various techniques, styles, textures, genres, and both conventional and experimental expressive possibilities. The show, made up of 38 works, can be seen until the end of this month in the colonial house of Alfredo Ramos, on Línea106, permanent headquarters of the Museum of Maniac Art in Havana. Sandra Ceballos told OnCuba that the exhibition is not about showing religious or folk art. The artistic intention is to excavate in the enigmatic presence of the "Eggun or dead as the matrix of all clandestine psychophysical phenomena, legitimize and qualify precisely those intelligent energies that do not sin as egocentric and that are possibly more authentic and spontaneous than the material world." “Defend their spokesmen, historically discriminated against and repressed by 'science'. To investigate the 'vaporous intervention' of spirits in life, that is the objective" she added. Bruges ... puts an extensive catalog for the consideration of disbelievers and faithful, impossible to visualize and enjoy all at once. It has works by renowned intellectuals and artists such as the researcher Natalia Bolívar, who exhibited her voodoo dolls in a glass case called "Five Spirits." You can see an installation with ashes of human corpses, by Iván Perera, from his series Immanents. Digital impressions of Álvaro José Brunet, Susan Bank, Rodney Batista also join the show together with works by Javier Alejandro Bobadilla Díaz, José Bedia and Juan Francisco Elso Padilla. A video installation by Tania Bruguera is exhibited that records the petition to the Pope to support the immigrant and undocumented community to apply for the 2014 Vatican City citizenship. You can also see an interesting photograph of the Colón Cemetery, in silver on gelatin, by Pedro Abascal from 1983. From Santiago Rodríguez Olazábal, recognized for addressing religious themes in his work, there is a large-format card: "Evil entered him from below." A video-projection of Marta María Pérez Bravo is included, one of the most spiritual pieces, without a doubt. The installation "EPD" by José Ángel Vincench: gold dust on sheets and candles and a painting from the 2010 Manuel Mendive National Prize for Plastic Arts, are other main attractions of the selection. The Canadian duo The Fastwurms (Kim Kozzi and Dai Skuse), with their medieval witch costumes, including a conical hat, arrived with their "Love is Law" installation of varying dimensions: a large spider web made of black bras. Also memorable is “Incompetent King” by Hugo Consuegra, ink and pen on cardboard (1959), and Roberto Diago's work, “Motivo de bosque”, a mixed technique on masonite from 1993, of great vitality and expression as much of his work. Espacio Aglutinador will continue to exhibit genuine and transgressive art as an “emergency room” and autonomous plaza for the promotion and development of Visual Arts, as its founder explains: “This exhibition gives continuity to the work of our non-exclusive space to disseminate the witchcraft of the world, from the dawn of humanity to the present day, passing through the traditions, religions, spells, enchantments, and philosophies of various places and historical moments. As has already been demonstrated on other occasions, Aglutinador is always renewing itself to create alternative projects to its alternativeness ”, concluded Sandra. 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.

PUBLICATIONS Nkame Mafimba. Belkis Ayon Dimensions: 24 × 31 cm Pages: 400 Binding: chrome-plated hardcover with French dust jacket ISBN: 978-84-19539-24-3 Language: Bilingual Spanish-English Second revised and expanded edition of Belkis Ayón's catalog raisonné. Available in: Turner Libros Belkis Ayon (Havana, 1967-1999) is a key figure in the history of Cuban art. With her unexpected death, aesthetic inquiries and technical procedures of considerable impact on contemporary engraving were interrupted. Belkis deployed a rigorous intellectual research on the Abakuá Secret Society, which allowed her to discover its symbolic and cultural universe in order to build an inimitable visual narrative. The founding myth of Sikán became the thematic referent of the discourse traced by the artist. The character became an alter ego, allowing her to channel deep existential questions and, at the same time, stimulate a re-reading of themes such as identity, power relations, fear, pain or sexuality. In the sacred Abakuá language, Nkame mafimba means to praise, story, conversation in the deep. Twenty-five years after her death, the legacy of this creator continues to inspire profound reflections in the contemporary cultural scene. This new edition expanded and revised by her Estate, contains as a novelty the cataloging and reproduction of all the artist's matrices. The book includes two QRs that refer to all the texts in Spanish and English of the first edition on one hand and, on the other, to the texts of the new edition in German, following the reunion with the Ludwig Foundation in Aachen, which has supported this publication. In bookstores from November 20th, 2024. Behind the veil of a Myth. Belkis Ayon Project Management: Dra. Katia Ayón. Belkis Ayón Estate Editorial Edition and Texts: Cristina Vives Design: Laura Llópiz Translation: Gloria Riva, Olimpia Sigarroa 210 Pages | English Edition Station Museum of Contemporary Art, 2018 ISBN: 978-1-4951-4650-3 Available on: Ebay "Behind the veil of a myth" considers the most significant moments of the creative process of the Cuban engraver Belkis Ayón (Havana, 1967-1999), followed by a virtual tour of the exhibition "Nkame. A retrospective of the Cuban engraver Belkis Ayón ", exhibited in Cuba for the first time in September 2009, traveling through different museums in the United States since 2016. Based on the study of the work of Belkis Ayón carried out by the curator Cristina Vives, as well as in parts of an interview with the artist, and extensively illustrated with the 48 pieces that make up the exhibition among others, "Behind the veil of a myth" offers a description of the creative life of Belkis and the main motivations that led her to an investigation that totally absorbed her short but intense artistic life: The Secret Society Abakuá. His work evolved from the stage of "representation" of the myth during his student years, to a later artistic moment in which the myth served as a vehicle for a post-modern disguise, which characterized young Cuban artists in the 90's. after the collapse of European socialism. Belkis' monumental engravings were pioneers in Cuba and worldwide and provided the Abakuá legend with an overwhelming iconography, which it did not have previously. "Behind the veil of a myth" is an approach that interconnects the artist with the Cuban and international context and the unequivocal signs of the present and the universality that her work communicates from her deep social and liberating vocation. exclusive release exclusive release exclusive release exclusive release Belkis Ayón Ines Anselmi, Jaime Sarusky 89 Páginas | [NAME] Publications, 2024 | Tapa dura | 9.5 x 6.75 inches | Textos en Español e Inglés | ISBN: 9798988981701 Precio de venta: $35.00 Availability: [NAME] Publications Published in collaboration with David Castillo, Belkis Ayón is an 89-page bilingual monograph focusing on the voice and work of the late printmaker. The book includes two historical interviews with filmmaker Ines Anselmi and the late journalist Jaime Sarusky, providing insights into Ayón’s methods, style, and her exploration of Abakuá fraternal society in Cuba. Ayón’s words reveal the significance of the society’s origin story, iconography, and practices in shaping her own visual language. Alongside these interviews, the publication features full-page plates showcasing notable works created by the artist between 1989 and 1999. Despite Ayón’s restrained palette of black, brown, and gray, each work in the book unveils a universe of intricate details and textures, conveying profound meanings which she achieved through her unique process of collagraphy. Belkis Ayón is published on the occasion of the first gallery solo exhibition of Ayón’s work since her passing in 1999, organized by David Castillo and the Belkis Ayón Estate. The exhibition will be on view at David Castillo from January 30 – April 25, 2024. Belkis Ayón Manso (January 23, 1967 – September 11, 1999) pursued her education at the San Alejandro Academy in Havana, Cuba (1986) and earned her Bachelor’s degree in engraving from the Instituto Superior de Arte, Havana (1991). She participated in residencies at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia; the Brodsky Center, Philadelphia College of Art; and Benson Hall Gallery, Rhode Island School of Design. Ayón left a lasting impact on the art world, participating in significant international exhibitions during her lifetime, including the 45th Venice Biennale. Ongoing retrospectives of her work, starting with the Fowler Museum at UCLA in 2016 and most recently at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, underscore her enduring influence. Her work has also been included at the 59th Venice Biennale and the 34th Bienal de São Paulo. Ayón’s work can be found in private and public collections worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art, NY, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Nkame. Belkis Ayon Project Management: Dra. Katia Ayón. Belkis Ayón Estate Editorial Concept: Cristina Vives Authors: José Veigas, Cristina Vives, David Mateo, Lázara Menéndez Design: Laura Llópiz 296 Pages | 400 Images | Bilingual Spanish / English Edition Turner Editores, Madrid, 2010 ISBN: 978-84-7506-916-6 Availability: SOLD OUT SECOND EDITION IN THE PRODUCTION PROCESS Book made with the Sponsorship of: Daros Latinamerica Collection, Zürich, Switzerland | The Von Christierson Collection, London, England | Afrikan Museum, Berg en Dal, The Netherlands | Cisneros-Fontanalls Foundation, Miami, USA | Alex and Carole Rosenberg, New York, USA | Brownsote Foundation, Paris, France | Caguayo Foundation, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba. Belkis Ayón (1967-1999) left, after her death, a set of essential works for contemporary printmaking. The religion and the Abakuá Secret Society (original from the African Calabar, and settled in Cuba since the 19th century) served the artist as a "cite" and a "reference" to construct a universal discourse against marginalization, frustration, fear, censorship, impotence and in favor of the search for freedom. This society, created by men and for men, stigmatizes and segregates women and, in turn, maintains strict discipline and maintains unassailable ethics and mystery. Belkis penetrated the space of the rite as far as he was allowed and studied all the sources of information at her reach. As a result, she created an overwhelming iconography and interpreted religious myth from her position as a woman, black, and Latina artist in the late 20th century. Nkame, synonymous with praise and salutation in the Abakuá language, pays tribute to a creator who left a message of life with her death.

NKAME: A RETROSPECTIVE OF THE CUBAN PRINTMAKER BELKIS AYÓN (1967-1999) Jordan Schnitzer Art Museum, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, United States February 6 - September 5, 2021 The traveling exhibition Nkame: A Retrospective of the Cuban printmaker Belkis Ayón (1967-1999) was inaugurated on February 6, 2021, at its seventh venue, the Jordan Schnitzer Art Museum. A project developed by this prestigious institution and the Belkis Ayón Estate, Havana, Cuba. The exhibition is curated by Cristina Vives. Exhibition Tour Management by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA. Photographs by Jonathan Smith. For more information, visit the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art website