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

HOLD ME IN PAIN Unterstütze mich, halte mich hoch, im Schmerz. Belkis Ayón / Hold me in pain Kirche St. Barbara, Breinig, Germany November, 1995 Curators: Helmo Hernández, Ludwig Foundation of Cuba Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Becker, Ludwig Forum Aachen Words to the catalog: “Among the artists who develop the theme of God in their paintings. We are passionate about Belkis Ayón for several reasons. She comes from Cuba, and the native population of Africa on this island has achieved in Santeria a special mixture of Christian icons with the orishas of the Yoruba religions. The fact that Belkis Ayón deals with these issues makes her an artist who began in the 80s when a new perspective on religions and their importance for the lives of mankind emerged throughout the world. And in the socialist state of Cuba, this occupation has a meaning: the contradiction assumed with the religious members of the Party enriches the political practice. Belkis Ayón is a draftsman, and a printmaker with precision, subtlety, and perfection rarely seen. And yet that desire for perfection is not put at the service of the search for any beauty, but for a respectful contradiction in works full of concerns and dignity ”(Wolfgang Becker, in Belkis Ayón, Halte mich hoch… (Breining, 1995).

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.

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