An Exhibit at the UCLA Fowler Museum
For the opening reception of Nkame, a retrospective of work by the Cuban artist Belkis Ayón (1967-1999), the UCLA Fowler museum appeared full to capacity. This is the first, and sorely overdue, solo exhibit of the late artist’s work in the United States. On October first, the museum’s central courtyard held a diverse and boisterous crowd drinking mojitos, Cuba’s iconic cocktail. On the front lawn of the museum, a band lead by vocalist Lázaro Galarraga—a founding member of the Ballet Folklórico Nacional de Cuba—had people dancing to rumba and music referencing the Santería tradition. Back inside the galleries where Ayón’s work is exhibited, it was difficult to navigate one’s way through the congregation of bodies and excited chatter. And yet Ayón’s life size silhouettes of human figures, goats, fish and snakes seemed to populate the space of the gallery with as much presence, silently observing with mouthless faces and through wide cut-outs for eyes.
Under groupings of “New Cuban Art” or 1990s art from Cuba, one will often find Belkis Ayón’s work catalogued with the following identifying markers: “black woman,” “printmaker,” and/or “Abakuá mythology.” That a woman should make the Abakuá society, an exclusively male association, the iconographic content of her art, executed so masterfully in an underrepresented medium, is no insignificant fact. This is especially so when we consider that Ayón was making visible a belief system inherited from cultural practices surviving the African diaspora at a time when the declared atheist government was just easing its intolerance towards religious practitioners and artists. At that time Ayón printed her work, scholars initiated public conversations on the persistence of racial inequality. Consequently, criticism of her work has tended to focus on an ethnographic decoding of the symbols and narratives in her compositions. And, as curator Cristina Vives has lamented, attention to the mythology has come at the cost of other more nuanced and politically dynamic readings of Ayón’s work.
While her 1990s cohort was celebrated internationally for its subversive, postmodernist critiques of the government, Ayón’s work was usually confined to exhibits centered on Afro-Cuban identity or representations of Afro-Atlantic religious practices. Understandably, Ayón’s Abakuá iconography would have a seductive appeal for both local and foreign publics. Whereas Santería has a strong visual presence—so much so that people might conflate other Afro-Cuban religious traditions under Santería’s banner—the Abakuá Society is not only small in membership and masonic in practice, but it also has no visual correlate. With the exception of ideographic signs called anaforuánas, Abakuá communication and the transmission of its mythology are predominantly oral. While Ayón is not the first artist to make a visual reference to the Abakuá, she is, however, the first to devote an entire corpus to representing their mythology. Essentially, Ayón’s work provides a figuration where there wasn’t one before, giving Abakuá members a way to visually imagine themselves and, for those uninitiated, the disclosure of a secret, or so it would seem.
Her large and densely packed compositions promise layered narratives rich with symbols to decipher. But perhaps what is most poetic about her pieces is precisely that which does not lend itself to reading. A common refrain in art history classes is the importance of seeing visual works in person as opposed to photographic reproductions. This imperative has never been more true than with Ayón’s images. While her prints, made up of various panels and measuring as large as 5×9 feet approximately, require one to step back in order to view the composition in its entirety, the surfaces of her work also insist on an up-close viewing. Having only seen her work in catalogs before, I was amazed by the variety of texture in her prints.
Ayón’s method of choice is a process called collography where instead of a metal plate or a block of wood, the artist creates the panel, or matrix, over a piece of card board, collaging differently shaped and textured materials. Her dramatic and mythic scenes were constructed by cutting silhouettes and arranging them along the panel in a two dimensional composition where the foreground and the background appear to merge onto a single plane. After applying paint over parts of the panel, Ayón would carve into the surface producing raised and depressed areas that take on organic and geometric patterns. Using only black and white ink, the result is a wide scale of gradation and an almost low relief, sculptural definition. That is, instead of producing the illusion of receding space, her tactile patterns produce depth at the surface. Interestingly, the few negative spaces in her compositions are often the silhouettes of human figures, whereas the spaces between figures, like an interconnecting web, are filled with swirls of paint or patterns that mimic cellular cavities and membranes. Her figures, closely arranged and usually overlapping, display differently patterned and textured skins: leaf shapes, fish scales, and leopard spots, for instance. The overall effect is a composition that does not allow itself to be taken in all at once, but requires one to move their eyes across the surfaces of picture plane.
A video playing as part of the Fowler exhibit shows Ayón preparing a matrix and later putting it through the press. The process necessarily produces a moment of unveiling at the other end of the press, as she pulls back the paper from the matrix and reveals the imprinted image. This unveiling is perhaps not unlike the one we anticipate before the displaying of the rites, rituals, and mythology of a secret society. However, as Cristina Vives suggests, Ayón’s use of Abakuá mythology served as a veil to address personal as well as social and political issues.
At the curator’s talk the day after the opening reception, Vives who guest curated the Nkame exhibit and worked closely with Ayón as both a friend and colleague, turned our attention to the various wall texts accompanying the prints. Since the exhibit already offered ample information on the Abakuá content of the pieces, rather than unpack individual symbols, Vives started by reminding us that the prints were made as works of art and not didactic lessons on the Abakuá. After all, Ayón took liberties with her representation, mixing Abakuá with Christian iconography and, most significantly, placed Sikán, the only female figure of the mythology, at the center of her compositions. In her later work, Ayón’s frame would eventually close in around the image of this mythic woman producing smaller pieces that might also be read as self-portraits. With titles such as ¡¡Déjame salir!! and claustrophobic compositions, it is now apparent, explained Vives, that Ayón was suffering. However, when she committed suicide in 1999 at the age of thirty-two it was a shock to those who knew her both personally and professionally. Ayón’s work had not only garnered international fame, but she was also beloved by her students and described as outwardly joyous by her family.
In her artist’s statement, Ayón explains:
I incorporate into my work personalities like the Leopard Man, a figure identified with imposing power and aggression—a “macho” who sacrificed Sikán, the woman who discovered the secret (of Abakuá) and dies at the hands of the men at the altar so that the secret would remain among them and not disappear. The secret consisted of a voice, the SACRED VOICE, produced by the Fish discovered by Sikán coming back from the river. The Fish was the reincarnation of Old Obón Tanzé, from Abasí the Supreme God. The transmission of the sacred voice was finally transmitted to the skin of a goat, a skin which vibrated on the sacred drum EKUÉ.[1]
Given that the origin story of the Abakuá centers on Sikán’s disclosure of a secret and her eventual sacrifice for doing so, the myth provides a vehicle to address censorship, gender inequalities, the control of knowledge, and the abuse of power, among other things. Drawing from this myth, Ayón’s prints are robust with referential potential. However, what I find especially interesting about Ayón’s statement is that the sacred voice is finally transmitted through a vibrating skin. Certainly, surfaces and skins, the material and tactile, are at the foreground of her prints and, as such, her images insist on that which does not allow itself to be disclosed through words and exceeds identifying markers.
[1] Words in caps are from the original quote taken from “Statements by and about the Deceased Artist Belkis Ayón,” Callaloo, Volume 37, Number 4, Art 2014, 769.