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.

In irregular confidence David Mateo March 4, 1997 © LA GACETA DE CUBA Magazine, No 2, March / April 1997, year 35, p. 50-51.v … Not a single word of anticipation or impatience. She knows that she is the main reason for this conversation and yet she waits patiently for Segura to finish explaining her sculpture project to me. I have the impression that I have seen her many times in that same deferential attitude, lavishing everything as if everything were superior to her. I do not even know if it is by adhesion or remembrance that I have come to think that his serenity has nothing to do with a marriage courtesy, but that even condescension continues to be his second virtue after colographies. “It seems that your work aspires to become universal, I tell him, as he hands me a group of matrices on a small table in his apartment in Alamar. The first one represents a fish woman, beginning in the spiritual world of one between two Jicoteas women; but the poetic atmosphere that the relationship between each one of them acquires is so moving that the allegory of the Abakuá legend and its particularly liturgical iconography almost seems to diminish; I had already noticed something similar with the inclusion of the Holy Spirit in one of the winning works at the Maastrich International Biennial. To some extent I have always been distant from the Abakuá mythology because my position is rather that of an observer. Distance is precisely that perspective in which I place myself to establish analogies and incorporate any universal experience into the particular logic of myth. I could give you the example of the work Repentida, which was one of the winners in the recent Engraving Meeting, in it a woman appears tearing her skin as a symbol of the ambivalence between what we want to be and what we really are. It seems to me that the Abakuá theme is going to be the starting point for a long time, the pretext for comparisons with life. The universe that its characters and incidental narratives enclose is enough by itself to prefigure any reason for human existence, an equivalence that I have begun to glimpse much more now with the relationship studies that I am carrying out between the mythical Abakuá and Christian religiosity. , for the purpose of creating something of a kind of personal holiness. -But won't you deny me that this process of interlinking between the specific circumstances of the myth and the social cosmogony is produced through a merely female speculation? Do you remember when I told you that you insert a feminine ideal where there never was? I have never thought that my work is feminist. I've never had that built-in calling. The first person who tried to draw attention to this aspect was the critic Eugenio Valdés, and it may even be that there is some reason that my work induces a certain femininity, because it reflects my own existential uncertainty; but I have not conceptualized it that way. The legend of the Sikán is a theme that I have been working on in my engravings since San Alejandro and what has always caught my attention is the condition of victim of the female character, but from a rather generic position, weighing the connotations and the analogies that could be derived from such a situation. And why then your insistence on self-representation? It is true that I am the model of my figurations. They shift with me from one state to another continuously, and even lose weight along with me. They are characters that I submit because I like the idea of deciding their destinies. They are the only alternative of revenge, or correction, lightening the term a little, with which I can count in reality; however I live a less mythical life, I exist from a much more objective perspective, much more objective. The imposition of destinations should consequently alter the meaning of the Abakuá fiction that you allude to. Aren't you afraid of offending the legend? What do the believers you have come in contact with think of that? The Abakuá who have valued my work are mostly intellectuals, and in one way or another they have identified with the project. So far I have not found any detractors. The very mystery of the legend, how hidden some of its meanings have been in the historical development is what has given me precisely the opportunity to make certain speculations, but my position has never been to recriminate the brotherhood, but for the contrary to respecting it and promulgating it in its broadest cultural sense. In this part of the conversation we have already reviewed about six or seven matrices, meticulously delineated with synthetic material, sandpaper, carborundum, gesso and all kinds of rare products in the colographic tradition. It occurs to me to ask Belkis what could happen if all those singular montages that are already ready to give the effects that she has been anticipating, had been drawn or painted on a canvas, and that is when her frankness turns into stupor: I have always been a very bad draftsman. Perhaps because they never demanded an Academy in the Elementary School studies, in the end I decided on engraving. Without realizing it I was creating a kind of trauma with drawing and painting and so I began to look for a type of image that was credible but did not emphasize anatomical delicacies. Then I discovered that with this synthesis of details I protected the mystery of the images more, and that I had to continue emphasizing poses, gestures, and gaze, trying to avoid certain definitions. I may one day get over the trauma and start painting, but I haven't thought about doing it yet. What in your opinion are the immediate antecedents of all this form of representation of yours? I really liked Russian Byzantine icons. I spent a good deal of time looking at them in art books, until one day I discovered that they were perfectly comparable to all Abakuá imagery. I remember that it was a time when I was researching Afro-Cuban cults and specifically the Anafouranas when something curious happened to me: I was in a class in San Alejandro trying to make a kind of dancing devil and Pablo Borges, who was my teacher at that time, told me with the spirit of being impressed, that what I was doing could bring me serious implications, and it was from that moment that I became interested in this type of representation; although in those days my approach to the matter was purely esoteric. In the libraries they denied me the information and enough I had to ask for a letter of authorization in the School. As far as the Legend of the Sikán is concerned, I consider that the reading I did of the book "El monte" by Lidia Cabrera was transcendental, although my awareness of the episode was total when I studied "Los Ñañigos" by Enrique Sosa. I have been about to comment to Belkis about two categories of the Canadian critic Northrop Frye: myth and commitment, which, although they were not issued specifically for the field of Plastic Arts, through them an approximate allegory of his work could also be attempted artistic. But I have only been on the verge of doing it, because in the end I have reserved it for myself, procuring a few more reasons for the literal intervals of this parliament. Something that may even run the risk of forced matching and that goes something like this: "The engravings of Belkis Ayón could be interpreted from the maxim of the critic Northrop Frye, in which he assures that art is" a laboratory where new myths of commitment were prepared, released. " Fabular selection occurs in her case by way of visual and epic identification, mediated almost entirely by a deeply feminine aesthetic rationality - which apparently does not mean the same as feminist, although it is an approach to a deeply macho myth. - We would say that your work assumes a story in which an unequivocal value judgment is represented, from the point of view of the sexual nature of the person who stars and transmits it, although that judgment provides or alludes to cosmogony phenomena such as good and evil, betrayal and sacrifice and the confrontation between victims and perpetrators, and it is precisely within those limits of chaos that she incurs, restoring patterns of behavior and imposing alternative roles. If it were allegories of Frye's notions, his "new myth of commitment" would lie in the fact of opposing a sense of critical analysis to the hermetic interpretation of the mythological event and also in the additional purpose of extending those same collation experiences towards other manifestations of the interhuman bond. Short tense ending and clearly blessed, where the speculator is relieved of his guilt complex: Belkis, it is one thing that I believe in the conformity of all our irregular conversations or our considerations about the plastic arts, and another that I go around commenting on vindications in Cuban engraving, relying on the work of 6 or 7 artists, among which I intend to include you by the way, without even having consulted you before. That is why I take the opportunity now: Am I or am I not right? I believe that important technical concepts and principles are currently being revitalized in Cuban engraving. In my particular case, I would tell you that I am very interested in the level of discursive and aesthetic credibility that matrices can achieve in their final printing, and therefore I try to generate value effects, including color, by experimenting with novel materials. In other young engravers, the tradition has also been altered from many points of view, fundamentally with the experimentation of new supports, with the flexibility of the criteria on seriality with the dynamization, and sometimes even challenge or parody, of technical methods. habitual and in the very consolidation of the ethics of the trade ... and if all this can be called renewal, then I do not think it is bad that someone like you continues to comment on it. PREVIOUS article back to texts

TOWERS AND TOMBS Estudio Figueroa-Vives / Norwegian Embassy, El Vedado, Havana, Cuba September - November, 2019 On September 11, 2019, the exhibition Towers and Tombs in homage to the 20th Anniversary of the death of Belkis Ayón (1967-1999) were inaugurated at the Figueroa-Vives Studio / Norwegian Embassy. Also dedicated to her sister, Dr. Katia Ayón (1964-2019) who worked tirelessly and successfully in the promotion and conservation of her sister's artistic legacy through the Belkis Ayón Estate. The exhibition presents "an unsuspected parallel between historical moments, lives and aesthetics", which come together on the date of 09/11, unveiling through works and matrices of the outstanding Cuban printmaker alongside the photographic work of Janis Lewin (USA) and José A. Figueroa (Cuba). Press coverage https://rialta.org/el-11-de-seipt-de-belkis-ayon-por-el-estudio-figueroa-vives/

II Edición del Concurso Nacional de Colografía Belkis Ayón, 2015 II National Collography Contest Belkis Ayón ANNOUNCEMENT The National Council of Plastic Arts, the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), and the Graphic Society of Cienfuegos, in coordination with the Estate of Belkis Ayón, the Provincial Council of Plastic Arts, the Provincial Committee of the UNEAC, The Cuban Fund of Cultural Assets, the Paradiso Cultural Agency and ARTEX of the Cienfuegos province, summon all interested artists to participate in the Belkis Ayón National Coloring Contest, in homage to one of the Cuban artists who marked, with her graphic work and pedagogical, a milestone in the history of Engraving in Cuba. Basis of Participation All Cuban students and artists with engravings made in the COLLOGRAPHY technique, printed between 2014 and 2015, who have not participated in a previous exhibition, event or contest, may participate. Inscription The works must be sent unframed, through certified mail or in person, before March 10, 2015 to the Sociedad Gráfica de Cienfuegos, located at Ave. 50, # 2326, between Calle 23 and Calle 25, Cienfuegos 1 , Hundred fires. Tel. 043 517979. Each artist will have the right to present three works (independent or triptych) duly signed and numbered in pencil, which cannot exceed 60 x 80 cm (paper measurements). Workshops or artists tests are not accepted. Selection A single Jury will be appointed to select and award the works received. The selected and awarded works will be exhibited in the Cienfuegos Art Gallery, within the program of the 9th La Estampa Fair, an event that will be inaugurated on April 7, 2015, at 9 p.m., at which time it will be official the jury's decision. The exhibition will remain open to the public for 30 days. Likewise, it will be presented at the Casa del Benemérito de las Américas Benito Juárez of the Office of the City Historian, Havana, in 2015. The selected artists will be given the Certificate of Participation once the exhibition is over, along with the return of their works within 45 days. The organizers of the contest are responsible for the care of the works sent, running with all the expenses generated by the return of the same to their authors. Prize A single and indivisible Grand Prize will be awarded consisting of 3 000.00 MN (donation of the artists belonging to the Taller de la Sociedad Gráfica de Cienfuegos and the Estate of Belkis Ayón), a diploma and a reproduction of a work by the artist to which the contest is dedicated. The Jury will award mentions at its discretion, without financial award. The Jury's decision will be final. The winning works will become part of the Cienfuegos Stamp Cabinet. The awarded Artist will be invited to perform a personal exhibition at the Cienfuegos Art Center in 2017. The Belkis Ayón Residence, awarded to the award-winning artists, will run for a week; During this period, they will share experiences with prominent artists of contemporary Cuban plastic and engraving. Participating in the II Belkis Ayón National Coloring Contest implies acceptance of these Terms and Conditions. More information Organizing Committee of the Belkis Ayón National Coloring Contest GRAPHIC SOCIETY OF CIENFUEGOS caceres69@azurina.cult.cu | 043 517979 ESTATE OF BELKIS AYÓN, HAVANA belkat@cubarte.cult.cu | 07 642 3083 www.ayonbelkis.cult.cu | www.ayonbelkis.co Jury Awards Members of the Jury of the II National Collography Contest together with members of the Estate of Belkis Ayón and La Sociedad Gráfica de Cienfuegos. Cienfuegos, 2015. Events and Exhibitions II National Collography Contest Belkis Ayon Cienfuegos, 2015 Selected Works and Exhibition Muestra Concurso Exhibition Marcando Territorio: Gráfica femenina de México Exhibition ¿Sólo uno tiene la verdad? Exhibition Con las mismas manos. Exposición colectiva de grabado Exhibition Paisajes Cercanos Exhibition Nocturno Collography Master Class by Miguel A. Lobaina

ROLLING THEY MEET Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center (SUPEC), Shanghai, China March 3 - April 8, 2014 Under the title Rolling they meet, the CNAP collection exhibited at the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center (SUPEC) a selection of its main acquisitions and thus an entire inventory of the most recent Cuban plastic production. It is a set that includes around one hundred artists from the most diverse generations, aesthetics and ways of doing, gathered in an exhibition that seeks to function as a kaleidoscope of the island's symbolic production. The show ran from March to April 2014, following a roaming tour of two other cities in China. Participating artists: Pedro Abascal, Eduardo Abela Torrás, Eduardo Abela Villarreal, Gustavo Acosta, Lidzie Alvisa, Douglas Arguelles, Belkis Ayón, Abel Barreto, Abel Barroso, Agustin Bejarano, Adigio Benitez, Osmany Betancourt, Jacqueline Brito, Servando Cabrera, Luis E. Camejo, Ivan Capote, Yoan Capote, Agustin Cárdenas, Sandra Ceballos, Rafael Consuegra, Raúl Cordero, Raúl Corrales, Arturo Cuenca, Duvier del Dago, Roberto Diago, Alberto Díaz (Korda), José A. Díaz Peláez, Humberto Díaz, Nelson Domínguez , Antonia Eiriz, Roberto Fabelo, Ernesto Fernández, Moisés Finalé, Adonis Flores, Flora Fong, Ever Fonseca, José Manuel Fors, José Franco, Gilberto Frómeta, José Emilio Fuentes, José Fúster, Eduardo Rubén, Osneldo García, Ernesto García Peña, Rocío García, Julio Girona, Luis Gómez, José Gómez Fresquet, José R. González, Javier Guerra, William Hernández, Maykel Herrera, Aisar Jalil, Fayad Jamís, Ruperto Jay Matamoros, Joel Jover, Tomás Lara, Alicia Leal, Evelio Lecourt, Glenda León , TO lberto Lescay, Kcho, Liudmila and Nelson, Rita Longa, Kadir López, Manuel López Oliva, Jorge López Pardo, Raúl Martínez, Rigoberto Mena, Janler Méndez, Manuel Mendive, Michel Mirabal, Ibrahim Miranda, Arturo Montoto, Elsa Mora, Juan Moreira and others.

Exposiciones colectivas con la presencia de la obra de Belkis Ayón (1967-1999) COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS Estudio Figueroa-Vives / Norwegian Embassy, El Vedado, Havana, Cuba September - November, 2019 Towers and Tombs Read more Drapetomania. Tribute Exhibition to Grupo Antillano Galería de Arte Universal, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba / Consejo Nacional de Artes Plásticas, La Habana / 8th Floor Gallery, New York, United States / Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, California, United States / The Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States. April 2013 - 2015 Read more Museo de Arte Maníaco, Alfredo Ramos's Colonial House, Línea106, Havana, Cuba. October 26, 2014 Witches, but also warlocks Read more Havana, Cuba. October 13, 2014 Eva leaves and takes flight. Eva stops being a rib Read more Dinner-auction within the framework of the sixth and last edition of the Leo Brouwer Chamber Music Festival Havana Cuba. October 5, 2014 Read more Next

PRESENTATION OF THE BOOK NKAME. BELKIS AYÓN July 20, 2009 © Belkis Ayón Estate The National Museum of Fine Arts, the National Council of Plastic Arts, José A. Figueroa, and the Belkis Ayón Estate presented at the MNBA Theater. ARTE CUBANO Building, the books: NKAME, Belkis Ayón and José A. Figueroa. A Cuban Self-Portrait, with the participation of Orlando Hernández. NKAME.Belkis Ayón: this book documents in a meticulous way, the life and work of the Cuban artist Belkis Ayón PROJECT DIRECTOR: Dr. Katia Ayón EDITORIAL CONCEPT: Cristina Vives AUTHORS: José Veigas, Cristina Vives, David Mateo, Lazara Menéndez DESIGN: Laura Llópiz 296 PAGES | 400 IMAGES | BILINGUAL SPANISH / ENGLISH EDITION TURNER EDITORES MADRID 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, Stgo de Cuba, Cuba Belkis Ayón (1967-1999) left after her death a set of essential works for contemporary engraving. The religion and the Abakuá Secret Society (original from African Calabar, and settled in Cuba since the 19th century) served the artist as a "source" and a "reference" to construct a universal discourse against marginality, 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 she was allowed, and studied all the sources of information at her reach. As a result, she created a breathtaking iconography and interpreted the religious myth from her position as an artist, woman, black, and Latina 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. José A. Figueroa. A Cuban Self-Portrait: this book narrates more than four decades of the life of a country through the photographic work of José A. Figueroa. RESEARCH AND EDITING: Cristina Vives ESSAYS BY: Cristina Vives, Dannys Montes de Oca DESIGN: Pepe Menéndez 384 PAGES | 384 IMAGES | BILINGUAL SPANISH / ENGLISH EDITION TURNER EDITORES MADRID WITH THE SPONSORSHIP OF: The Busson Foundation Trust José A, Figueroa (Havana, 1946), began his professional life as a photographer in September 1964, when he began working at the Korda Studios in Havana. Due to his age, social extraction, and training, he is part of a generation of "transition" that was at the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, too young to be its manager, but adult enough as a conscious and analytical witness. His life and work, place him between "the inside" and "the outside" of that story. Also has allowed him to document, evaluate and symbolize many facets, both of the public and private life of the nation - two sides of the same coin - over many years; most importantly, it's a work made in Cuba or from a Cuban perspective. These characteristics and circumstances are, indeed, rare among their contemporaries or predecessors, seen individually. A Cuban self-portrait is approximately a portion of that story, through the work of one of the essential names in the history of Cuban photography. Promotional price of sale to the public in the presentation: 250 MN. Courtesy of the Belkis Ayón Estate; José A. Figueroa and the sponsors. PREVIOUS NEWS BACK TO NEWS

ROOTS AND MORE: JOURNEY OF THE SPIRITS Afrika Museum, Berg en Dal, Holland April 7 - November 7, 2009 Roots and More: Journey of the Spirits Scheduled to run from April 2009 to November 2009. Venue: Afrika Museum, Postweg 6, 6571 CS Berg en Dal, The Netherlands. Curator will be Wouter Welling The Roots and More: Journey of the Spirits exhibition is scheduled for 2009 and will almost certainly transfer to the Miami Art Museum in Florida at the end of 2009. It is a thematic exhibition on spirituality in the work of contemporary artists from the African diaspora ( specifically Brazil, Britain, Cuba, Curaçao, Haiti, Suriname and the United States): different countries and different generations. The art is spectacular: suspended boats with luminous spirit beings, singing sculptures, a spirit being that squeaks and groans as it rows a huge boat, the macabre sculptures of Haiti's mysterious Bizango society, spirits in bottles, paintings with magic signs and strange apparitions. In many cases the artists are priests, famous in their homeland but often unknown in Europe. For all their variety, they display one particularly striking similarity: they are all rooted in a spiritual world that is thoroughly African. Some are remote descendants of slaves who were deported to the Caribbean and America. The slaves took their traditional religions with them - religions originating in various regions of West and Central Africa (Benin, Nigeria, Congo, Angola). In the parts of the world where they were set to work, their ancestor spirits and the spirits of natural forces became allied in various ways with the dominant Christian religion - a forced amalgamation, for the slaves were not allowed to continue their own traditions. They were to prove spiritually very flexible. The Africans and their descendants recognized features of their own spirit beings in Catholic saints, and so were able to appropriate the saints and incorporate them into their own pantheon. New religions arose, such as Candomblé and Umbanda in Brazil, Winti in Suriname, Santeria, Abakuá and Palo in Cuba, Voodoo in Haiti and derivatives of it such as Hoodoo in the United States, and Obeah in places including Jamaica and Trinidad (although the latter are really forms of traditional 'healing arts' rather than religions). Other denominations sprang up in turn around them. This highly complex spirit world, with its own rituals, songs, music, symbols and images, is an inexhaustible source of inspiration for artists. There are constantly recurring themes: the journey of the spirits (boats), the relationship between the world of humans and the world of spirit beings and death (the domain, in voodoo, of Baron Samedi). People can have a relationship with both the world of the dead and the spirit world. Over twenty artists have been selected for Roots and More: Journey of the Spirits. Among others they are Belkis Ayón, Barra, José Bedia, Société Secrète Bizango (a group), María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Mestre Didi, Sokari Douglas Camp, Edouard Duval-Carrié, Félix Farfan, Adenor Gondim, Stivenson Magloire, Pascale Monnin, Santiago Rodríguez Olazábal, Gerald Pinedo, Edival Ramosa, Alison Saar, Eneida Sanches, Renée Stout, Patrick Vilaire and Frantz Augustin Zéphirin. Their work provides an opportunity to establish links with traditional African art from the Afrika Museum collection. However, unlike in the case of functional objects (ie objects that have 'operated' in a religious setting), these contemporary artists have clearly interpreted things in their own way. Roots and More: Journey of the Spirits is the first of its kind in the Netherlands and in Europe. Never before has there been an exhibition with such a topical focus on the spiritual wealth that Africa has offered and continues to offer the world. It marks a magical crossroads where sacrifices are made to Eleggua / Eshu / Lucero, on the threshold between two worlds, where everything - humans, spirits, animals and things - comes together. A richly illustrated bilingual catalog with an introduction to the various religions of the African diaspora and descriptions of the participating artists will be published to mark the exhibition. © Afrika Museum, Berg en Dal, The Netherlands / January 2008. . Participating artists: Belkis Ayón, Barra, José Bedia, Société Secrète Bizango (a group), María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Mestre Didi, Sokari Douglas Camp, Edouard Duval-Carrié, Félix Farfan, Adenor Gondim, Stivenson Magloire, Pascale Monnin, Santiago Rodríguez Olazábal, Gerald Pinedo, Edival Ramosa, Alison Saar, Eneida Sanches, Renée Stout, Patrick Vilaire and Frantz Augustin Zéphirin.

AN INTERDISCIPLINARY COURSE IN ORDER TO IMPROVE ENGLISH LANGUAGE SKILLS February 6, 2015 Humberto Figueroa. Director of the Museum of Cayey, Puerto Rico © Belkis Ayón Estate This year the Museo de Cayey from Puerto Rico was the place selected to take the final exam of an interdisciplinary course to improve skills in the English language. On this occasion, the exam consisted of choosing and speaking in English about a piece in the exhibition from the Antonio Martorell art collection. This exhibition responds to the concept of the artist-collector, developed by Martorell, who affirms that for different reasons, artists are sometimes the people with the most important art collections in their countries. The mysterious character in the image is a student who selected the piece by Belkis Ayón and covered his face, alluding to the work it represented. In this case, the young man spoke about the work and its author, describing his opinion about the representation of the mystery, the hidden or the unknown in Belkis's work. PREVIOUS NEWS NEXT NEWS

WITHOUT MASKS Museum of Anthropology (MOA), University of British Columbia, Johannesburg Gallery of Art, Vancouver, Canada, Johannesburg, South Africa May 2 - November 2, 2014 From May 2nd to November 2nd, 2014, the Museum of Anthropology (MOA), at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, hosted the exhibition: Without Masks: Contemporary Afrocuban Art, The von Christierson Collection. Curated by Orlando Hernández, the exhibition exhibits the private collection of Contemporary Afro-Cuban Art, by the Englishman Chris von Christierson.

NKAME: A RETROSPECTIVE OF THE CUBAN PRINTMAKER BELKIS AYÓN (1967-1999) Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, Texas, United States June 2 - September 3, 2018 After the successful presentations in different cities of the United States, the exhibition Nkame. A Retrospective of the Cuban printmaker Belkis Ayón (1967-1999), arrives at the Station Museum in Houston, Texas. The exhibition was inaugurated on the night of June 2 in an atmosphere full of friends, excellent music, and lovers of good art. The masterful curatorship of Cristina Vives, stood out on this occasion thanks to a curatorial idea that was brought to life, thanks to the efforts of the Museum staff and its Director James Harritas: many of the large-format works gained three-dimensionality when placed on individual walls, specially built for each piece, resulting in a very positive visual impact, as the pieces obtain an unprecedented monumentality. In addition, this exhibition will feature a book/catalog that will cover the exhibition and the life and work of Belkis Ayón, entitled Behind the veil of a myth . Produced by the Station Museum and the Belkis Ayón Estate, with texts by Cristina Vives and design by Laura Llópiz. The exhibition will be open to the public until September 3, 2018. Photographs: Ernesto León and Yadira Leyva Ayón