Belkin ayon biography template
•
The weight of secrets
by ESTER BARKAI
It is not unusual for artists to create their own visual language. But Cuban printmaker Belkis Ayón (1967 – 1999) went one step further and developed her personal iconography while telling the story of a secret society she could never join. The artworks on view in Nkame: A Retrospective of Cuban Printmaker Belkis Ayón relate to the origin story of the Abakuá, a Cuban all-male secret society.
The first thing that strikes me is the manner in which figures are portrayed — without ears, noses or mouths. The only facial features depicted in Ayón’s work are eyes. Figures are mostly rendered as white shapes drawn in outline or as black silhouettes; they inhabit a ghost world from which they stare out at the viewer.
It is, at first, a bit unsettling.
According to the exhibit, Abakuá is a secret mutual aid society. It functions, at least in part, to protect its members and is believed to have been brought to Cub
•
Belkis Ayón
Cuban visual artist (1967–1999)
Belkis Ayón | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1967-01-23)23 January 1967 Havana, Cuba |
| Died | 11 September 1999(1999-09-11) (aged 32) Havana, Cuba |
| Known for | Collography |
| Movement | Cuban art |
| Awards | Cuban Prize for National Cultural Distinction (1996) the Biennial of San Juan Prize for Latin American and Caribbean Engraving (1997) International Prize at the International Graphics Biennale in Maastricht, the Netherlands (1993) |
| Website | http://www.ayonbelkis.cult.cu/ |
Belkis Ayón (23 January 1967 – 11 September 1999) was a Cubanprintmaker who specialized in the technique of collography. Ayón created large, highly detailed allegorical collagraphs based on Abakuá, a secret, all-male Afro-Cuban society. Her work is often in black and white, consisting of ghost-white figures with oblong heads and empty, almond-shaped eyes, set against dark, patterned backgrounds.[1]
Early life
[edit]She was born in Havana, Cuba,
•
Belkis Ayón and the Cuba-West Africa Connection
Ayón’s goal was never to perpetuate the Abakuá myth but to subvert and transgress it. For me, she exhibits a practice of remix: “religious ritual that removes demons of fear and releases imagination”, a concept borrowed from Binyavanga’s lyric essay on the artist Wangechi Mutu. Black artists across the diaspora have long grappled with issues of displacement and temporality to conjure new visions. While Ayón’s work certainly reflects historical narratives, it is also highly metaphorical and autobiographical. “I see myself as Sikán, in a certain way as an observer, an intermediary, and a revealer. As I am not a believer, inom create her imagery from my studies and experiences. Sikán fryst vatten a transgressor, and as such inom see her, and inom see myself,” she fryst vatten quoted in her Reina Sofia retrospective. “I think that these engravings could be a spiritual testimony if you will, not lived in my own flesh, but imagined”, she elaborates in her 1991 “confess