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拍品专文
“I aspire above all to give my vision, my points of view as observer, presenting in a synthesized form the aesthetic, plastic, and poetic aspects I discovered in Abakuá,” Ayón once declared, “persistently relating them to the nature of man, with vivid personalities, with feeling which sometimes grips us, feelings we don’t know how to define, with these fugitive emotions…with the spiritual” (“Belkis Ayón: Statements by and About the Deceased Artist,” Callaloo 37, no. 4, 2014, p. 769). The mythology of Abakúa, the secret all-male, Afro-Cuban fraternity, provided a creative wellspring for Ayón across a short but prodigious career. She studied at Havana’s Instituto Superior de Arte and joined the faculty following her graduation in 1991; she later led the school’s department of printmaking. Ayón represented Cuba at the Venice Biennale in 1993, famously riding her bicycle twenty miles to the airport; Nkame: A Retrospective of Cuban Printmaker Belkis Ayón opened at the Fowler Museum at UCLA in 2016 and has traveled worldwide, most recently to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia earlier this year.
“It is curious that in almost all her works Belkis herself served as model for the representation of Sikán,” Orlando Hernández has observed. “The shape of her body, her head, her face, her eyes constantly appear in her prints replacÂing the body, the head, the face, and the eyes of Sikán... In Belkis’s works, Sikán became a woman once again, a black Cuban woman with feelÂings, ideas, opinions. Belkis’s presence as Sikán allows the ancient mythical situation constantly reenacted in the rituals to become human and contemporary, thus making visible the real and daily content that the mechanics of every ritual tend to hide or forget” (“Belkis Ayón Manso,” Nkame: A retrospective of Cuban printmaker Belkis Ayón, exh. cat., El Museo del Barrio, New York, 2017, p. 14). Sikán plays a central role in the origin myth of Abakúa. A princess of the Efut nation, Sikán unwittingly trapped a fish whose embodied voice belonged to the supreme deity and ancestor whose sacred knowledge was forbidden to women; she divulged this secret to her lover, a member of a rival tribe, in a decision that ultimately condemned her to death.
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park
“It is curious that in almost all her works Belkis herself served as model for the representation of Sikán,” Orlando Hernández has observed. “The shape of her body, her head, her face, her eyes constantly appear in her prints replacÂing the body, the head, the face, and the eyes of Sikán... In Belkis’s works, Sikán became a woman once again, a black Cuban woman with feelÂings, ideas, opinions. Belkis’s presence as Sikán allows the ancient mythical situation constantly reenacted in the rituals to become human and contemporary, thus making visible the real and daily content that the mechanics of every ritual tend to hide or forget” (“Belkis Ayón Manso,” Nkame: A retrospective of Cuban printmaker Belkis Ayón, exh. cat., El Museo del Barrio, New York, 2017, p. 14). Sikán plays a central role in the origin myth of Abakúa. A princess of the Efut nation, Sikán unwittingly trapped a fish whose embodied voice belonged to the supreme deity and ancestor whose sacred knowledge was forbidden to women; she divulged this secret to her lover, a member of a rival tribe, in a decision that ultimately condemned her to death.
Abby McEwen, Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park