The Mysterious World of Belkis Ayón
From Havana to Los Angeles, a historic exhibition curated by Cristina Vives
The Fowler Museum is pleased to present Nkame, the first solo museum exhibition in the United States dedicated to the work of Belkis Ayón (1967–1999)—the late Cuban visual artist who mined the founding myth of the Afro-Cuban fraternal society Abakuá to create an independent and powerful visual iconography. Ayón was known for her signature technique of collography, a printing process in which a variety of materials of various textures and absorbencies are collaged onto a cardboard matrix and then run through the press with paper.
"For the first time, this artist is having a major solo exhibition in a US museum. Nkame: A Retrospective of Cuban Printmaker Belkis Ayón is also her first solo museum show outside the Island. With its signs of religious inspiration, its figures shrouded in mystery, textures of animal skin, and more still to be discovered, the symbolism of her art is now presented to the American public.
The young draftswoman and printmaker still speaks through her works, 17 years after her death. How to understand her figures without lips, interrogating the viewer? The role of a woman in a black-and-white world dominated by men?
Through February 12, the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles is showing 43 major works by Ayón. The exhibition’s curator, Cristina Vives, spoke with Cuban Art News about the reasons for bringing Ayón´s work to the United States, especially with the restoration of diplomatic relations between the two countries."— Lidia Hernández Tapia, Nov. 8, 2016
Read the full article at the Cuban Art News website.