NEWS Belkis Ayón at the 34th São Paulo Biennial 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. READ MORE February, 2020: Nkame arrives at the Chicago Cultural Center The traveling exhibition Nkame: A Retrospective of the Cuban Printmaker Belkis Ayón (1967-1999) will be inaugurated on February 29, 2020, at its sixth venue, the Chicago Cultural Center. READ MORE IV National Collography Contest Belkis Ayón Announcement for the IV national Collography Contest Belkis Ayón. April 9-12, 2020. Cienfuegos IV Edition postponed due to the epidemiological situation with the Covid-19 READ MORE Behind the veil of a myth. New book about Belkis Ayón's artwork 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. READ MORE Nkame arrives at the Station Museum of Contemporary Art in Houston, Texas After the successful presentations in different cities of the United States while traveling through this country, the exhibition Nkame. A Retrospective of the Cuban Printmaker Belkis Ayón (1967-1999), arrives at the Station Museum in Houston, Texas. READ MORE Nkame: A Retrospective of the Cuban Printmaker Belkis Ayón, selected among the best of the art of 2017 worldwide by ARTnews magazine ... among other very important contemporary art exhibitions of the year, Nkame ... was selected in position number 4, among the best exhibitions in the world of the year 2017 ... READ MORE Nkame: A Retrospective of the Cuban Printamker Belkis Ayón, selected among the best of art of 2017 by the New York Times Nkame featured this summer at Museo del Barrio, NY (June 13 - November 5) was selected among the best of the art of 2017 by the New York Times ... READ MORE Nkame: A Retrospective of the Cuban Printmaker Belkis Ayón (1967-1999) at the Museo del Barrio, New York. The exhibition Nkame: A Retrospective of the Cuban Printmaker Belkis Ayón will be inaugurated at the Museo del Barrio in New York on June 13. This will be the second venue to host the artist's first personal exhibition at an institution in the United States ... READ MORE Nkame: A Retrospective of the Cuban Printmaker Belkis Ayon (1967-1999) at the Fowler Museum at UCLA This will be the artist's first personal exhibition at an institution in the United States. The exhibition brings together 43 works and a documentary by the American filmmaker Sun Meidia ... READ MORE Memories Belkis Ayón's work will be part of the exhibition "Memories" that will open next Thursday, April 14 at 6:00 pm in the Gallery Orígenes of the Gran Teatro de La Habana «Alicia Alonso». READ MORE The 2015 Palma Digital Prize is awarded to the website of the artist Belkis Ayón READ MORE An interdisciplinary course in order to improve English language skills 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 ... READ MORE Callaloo Art & Culture in the African Diaspora Magazine illustrated its cover with the piece La Cena, 1988 by Belkis Ayón 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. READ MORE Agglutinated between the esoteric and the Manic Art Under the title of Witches, but also Warlocks, the Aglutinador space and the Maniac Art Museum these days exhibit a sui generis sample that blends art with rites and religious beliefs from different parts of the planet. READ MORE The book Nkame wins Second Prize for the best books published in Spain in 2010 The Ministry of Culture of Spain has awarded the Awards for the Best Edited Books in 2010. These awards do not have an economic endowment but are highly valued by publishers for what they mean of recognition and prestige 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. READ MORE Curatorship Award 2009 The National Council of Plastic Arts presents the CURATORSHIP AWARD to Cristina Vives for NKAME. BELKIS AYÓN (1967-1999). ANTHOLOGICAL EXHIBITION. READ MORE Book NKAME. Belkis Ayón 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. READ MORE

DESASOSIEGO/RESTLESSNESS Couturier Gallery, Los Angeles, California, United States. March, 1998 Catalog text: Belkis Ayón. Desasosiego/ Restlessness. When Darrel Couturier sent the request by fax for the title for this exhibition I still did not have it, I 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, still nothing occurred to me - I entered a state of desperation imperceptible to the eye - again showing my moderate personality, except to laugh and do large collographies. I thought about the works that I had already finished and I asked myself what feelings they have in common since I have been working on the subject for years in general - and I associate it a little with what I have been feeling in recent months, a great RESTLESSNESS, something that almost unconsciously began to appear in my work. As I mentioned earlier, the subject that I have been working on for years since I began to study in the third year of San Alejandro Academy, it's one of the components of the Cuban culture on the African side, the carabalíes and from them, the Abakuá Secret Society composed only by men, which emerged in the 1830s 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 Abakuá, relating it to the questioning of the nature of man, with personal experiences, that feeling that sometimes captures us 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 passing it to men, and not disappearing. The secret consisted of a voice, a 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 engraving technique of collography, which 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 restlessness, insistently looking for a way out. Belkis Ayón Havana, Cuba, January 1998.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS Phillys Kind Gallery, New York, 1998 Couturier Gallery, Los Angeles, California, 1998 St Barbara Church, Aachen, Germany, 1995 1989 Proposal at the age of twenty (Belkis Ayón and Isary Paulet), Servando Cabrera Art Gallery, December 23-January, 1989, Havana. . . 1990 Sikán Kien, Leopoldo Romañach Art Gallery, June 30, Caibarién, Villa Clara, Cuba. . Sikan Kien, the powerful and wise, Art Gallery III Congress, August, Ranchuelo, Villa Clara, Cuba. . . 1991 Sacred memory, Alamar Art Center, June 22, Havana / Art Center, Guantánamo, Cuba. . . 1992 Art Cubain Contemporain (Belkis Ayón and Eduardo Yáñez), Center d'Exposition de la Gare L'Annonciation, May 1-27, L'Annonciation, Québec, Canada. . Engravings, Saw Gallery, May 7, Ottawa, Canada. . . 1993 Evidences of vindication (Belkis Ayón, Isary Paulet, Ibrahim Miranda), Centro de Arte 23 y 12, October-November, Havana. . I always go back. Engravings by Belkis Ayón, Provincial Center of Plastic Arts and Design, November 30-December, Havana. . . 1994 I always come back, Galleria Colorenero, May 17-June 11, Milan, Italy. . Belkis Ayón and Santiago Rodríguez Olazábal, [Galleria] Cheiros, Palazzo Colonnese Valeri, December 8-January, 1995, Vicenza, Italy. . . nineteen ninety five I always go back. Personal exhibition Belkis Ayón, Grau Gallery, Visual Arts Development Center, July, Cienfuegos, Cuba. . Unterstütze mich, halte mich hoch, im Schmerz. Belkis Ayón (Hold me in pain. Belkis Ayón), Kirche St Barbara, November 3-19, Breinig / Ludwig Forum fur Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany. . . nineteen ninety six Belkis Ayón, Cuban artiste, Galerie Bourbon-Lally, April 19, Pétionville, Haiti. . Two Contemporary Cuban Artists: Belkis Ayón and Nelson Domínguez, Hofstra Museum, Hofstra University, April 21-August 2, Hempstead, New York, United States. . . 1997 Ángel Ramírez + Belkis Ayón. The New Wave of Cuban Art - I, Gallery gan, March 31-April 26, Tokyo, Japan. . Grand Pas de Trois. Sixth Biennial of Havana, (Norberto Marrero, Belkis Ayón and Juan Carlos Menéndez), Zulueta esq. a Refugio, 5th. floor, apt. 52, May 3-31, Havana. . . 1998 Desasosiego / Restlessness, Couturier Gallery, March 6-April 11, Los Angeles, California, United States. . Bernardo Marqués / Belkis Ayón, Havana Galerie, August 27-December 5, Zurich, Switzerland. . Belkis Ayón / Elsa Mora. Recent Work, Phyllis Kind Gallery, September 19-October 31, New York, United States. . Belkis Ayón & Ángel Ramírez. The New Wave of Cuban Art –II, November 6-December 20. Gallery Gan, Tokío, Japan. . . 1999 Rites. Photographies by René Peña; Collographies by Belkis Ayón, Bourbon-Lally Gallery, May 14, Pétionville, Haiti. . . 2000 I always go back. Collographies by Belkis Ayón. Tribute exhibition, Seventh Havana Biennial, Galería Habana, November 15-December 18, Havana. . . 2001 Images from silence. Collographies and matrices by Belkis Ayón, National Museum of Fine Arts, July, Havana. For a return. Collographies of Belkis Ayón, Caguayo Foundation, Provincial Center of Plastic Arts and Design, November 2, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba. . . 2002 Belkis Ayón. La Huella Múltiple 2002 (personal exhibition), April 19-May 19. La Casona Gallery, Havana. . . 2003 Belkis Ayón Early Work, Patricia Doran Graduate Gallery, Massachusetts College of Art, April 4-19, Boston, Massachusetts, United States. . . 2004 Resurrection. Belkis Ayón (1967-1999) Collographs from Cuba, Massachusetts College of Art, Arthur Ross Gallery, University of Pennsylvania and Brandywine Workshop, October 11-January 4, 2004, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. . . I always go back. Collographies of Belkis Ayón, Recoleta Cultural Center, May 21-June 21, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Reunion. Exhibition of Belkis Ayón and his students. Exhibition in tribute to the artist, José Antonio Díaz Peláez Gallery, San Alejandro Academy, July 6, Havana. . . 2005 I always go back. Colographs by Belkis Ayón, Colón Art Gallery, June 3-30, Colón, Matanzas, Cuba. I always go back. Colografías of Belkis Ayon, Provincial Art Gallery Villa Clara, July, Santa Clara, Villa Clara, Cuba. . . 2006 Belkis Returns. Collographies of Belkis Ayón, Ranchuelo Art Gallery, February 3-28, Ranchuelo, Villa Clara, Cuba. The challenge of permanence. Anthological exhibition of Belkis Ayón (1967-1999), Pedro Esquerré Gallery, CPAV, May 12-June 11, Matanzas, Cuba. Belkis Ayón. Origin of a myth, Villa Manuela Gallery, October 6 to November 4, Havana. . 2007 Sikan. Revelation of a myth, Art Gallery Raúl Martínez, Jan. 17- Feb. 15. Ciego de Avila, Cuba. . . 2009 Nkame. Belkis Ayón (1967-1999), Anthological Exhibition, San Francisco de Asís Convent, September 11 - December 20, Havana, Cuba. . .

SOLO EXHIBITIONS Couturier Gallery, Los Angeles, California, United States March 10, 1998 Desasosiego / Restlessness Read more Church of St. Barbara, Breining, Germany November 7, 1995 Unterstütze mich, halte mich hoch, im Schmerz. Belkis Ayón / Hold me in pain Read more Servando Cabrera Moreno Art Gallery December, 1988 Proposal at age 20 Read more return to personal exhibitions

NKAME: A RETROSPECTIVE OF THE CUBAN PRINTMAKER BELKIS AYON (1967-1999) AT THE FOWLER MUSEUM AT UCLA September 30, 2016 Yadira Leyva Ayón © Belkis Ayón Estate The exhibition Nkame: A Retrospective of the Cuban Printmaker Belkis Ayón will be inaugurated on October 1st at the UCLA Fowler Museum, Los Angeles, California. This will be the artist's first personal exhibition at an institution in the United States. The exhibition brings together 43 works and a documentary by the American filmmaker Sun Meidia. The exhibition, organized by the Fowler Museum and the Belkis Ayón Estate, is curated by Cristina Vives. It will be open to the public until February 12, 2017. PREVIOUS NEWS NEXT NEWS

Escritos personales de Belkis Ayón (1967-1999) REVELATIONS Restlessness / Restlessness Belkis Ayón Manso January, 1998 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 went into a state of desperation imperceptible to the eye - again showing my moderate personality, less to laugh and do great colography ... READ MORE Confessions Belkis Ayón Manso February 11, 1991 Some time ago I studied some of the components of our culture, on the African side, the carabalíes and of them the Abakuá Secret Society, made up only of men, a mutual aid and relief society, self-financed by its members. It resurfaces in the 30s of the 19th century in Cuba under other conditions and objectives very different from those of its African ancestors. There are people who feel and have the need to believe in something, which is inherent in human existence and one of those many examples is the following ... READ MORE

TEXTS REVIEW INTERVIEWS REVELATIONS

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