NKAME: A Retrospective of Cuban Printmaker Belkis Ayón
Curated by Cristina Vives
This landmark retrospective is the first in the U.S. 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 materials of various textures and absorbencies are collaged onto a cardboard matrix and then run through the press with paper. Her narratives, many of which were produced at very large scale by joining multiple printed sheets, are imbued with an air of mystery, in part due to her deliberately austere palette of shades and subtle tones of black, white, and grey. For a black Cuban woman, both her ascendency in the contemporary printmaking world and her investigation of a powerful all-male brotherhood were notable and bold. Nkame, a sweeping overview of her most fertile period of artistic creativity, covers Ayón’s graphic production from 1986 until her untimely passing. This exhibition was organized by the Belkis Ayón Estate, Havana, Cuba, in collaboration with the Fowler Museum at UCLA.
CURATOR’S STATEMENT
Belkis Ayón (Havana, 1967 – 1999) died at the age of thirty-two, leaving behind a body of work of considerable importance for the history of contemporary printmaking. Her death remains a painful mystery for the national and international art community that had witnessed with admiration her successful rise to the most demanding artistic circles of the 1990’s. Ten years after her death, the artist’s Estate presents art lovers and researchers the first retrospective exhibition of the artist entitled Nkame which gathers a wide selection of her graphic production from 1984 to 1999, date of her physical disappearance.
Nkame, a word meaning praise and salutation in the Abakuá language, is used as the name of the exhibition and as such, to define its character. This exhibition is not a posthumous homage, a remembrance tribute or a retrospective study of the artist’s work, although they are all included; Nkame is a selective approach, open to new interpretations – hence it was called anthological exhibition-, and is at the same time, evidence of the curatorial thesis according to which the body of works produced by Belkis Ayón between 1984 and 1999, represent a lineal process of artistic research corresponding with an equal process of growth of the artist’s personality. Said otherwise, Nkame attempts to be a dialogue between art and Belkis Ayón’s life, who left with her death a message for the future.
Nkame does not bid farewell but greets warmly.
For the visitor, this exhibition will be like a test where the works, on their own and self- contained strength, will prove their universality. It will not be necessary to have an exhaustive knowledge of the codes, symbols and religious practices that gave origin and life to the legend or the Abakuá Secret Society that the artist chose as the topic for her research to be able to “understand” or “to feel” the human drama in the work of Belkis Ayón. Nor will be necessary either to have a full command of the Abakuá language, the identities of the characters represented, or the anecdotic passages that gave life to the legend – that time and again become “commonplace” in the texts of the critics of her work. Nor will it be necessary “to sectorize” the understanding to those that are historical or socially related to the religious topic recurrent in her works: Although my work deals with a theme as specific as the beliefs, rituals and myths of the Abakuá Secret Society, this does not mean that it is devoted solely to the population that practices and professes this faith. Above all, I am interested in questioning human nature – that fleeting feeling, spirituality, by which my art can be appreciated by a universal public, though it is very difficult at first sight to escape from the impression, the forms, and the image. [Text written by Belkis Ayón circa 1993, in the State’s archive.]
-Cristina Vives
NKAME: A Retrospective of Cuban Printmaker Belkis Ayón exhibition and catalogue are made possible through major support The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, series sponsor of El Museo del Barrio’s Women Artist Retrospective Series, and public support from New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito.
videoarte: Elena Wen
This mini solo exhibition features a series of animated film works that the artist created between 2005 and 2013. Urban scenes, colorful landscapes, gossipy or nonsensical conversations, science fiction-inspired scenes, and statistics all make an appearance among Elena’s charming animations. No single film is longer than three minutes, packing a great deal of playful significance into a mini epic.
Elena Wen was born in Taiwan, and moved to Costa Rica with her family when she was 3 years old. Wen studied Illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and became an illustrator of limited edition art books that are now in the library collections of various institutions such as San Francisco MOMA, Getty Research Institute, Stanford and other university archives. Continuing her education in digital media at Parsons School of Design offered, the artist’s drawings became animation installations. She has exhibited at the A.I.R. Gallery, Flux Factory, and Secret Project Robot in NYC; at Lumen Eclipse in Harvard Square, Boston; and on the Great Wall of Oakland in California. She also in the Costa Rica Biennial in 2009, where her work was selected for the Central America Biennial exhibition (Bienal del Istmo Centroamericano) also in 2009. Her work was included in the 2011 bienal at El Museo del Barrio, The Street Files.
New to You: Recent Acquisitions
This exhibition features new acquisitions from El Museo’s collection, none of which have been previously exhibited. New to You looks at a broad scope of works from the collection through the lens of fantasy and an exploration of the relationship between forms and contexts. Odd figures, strange creatures, unknowable landscapes and unusual points of view abound. Portraits are partly rendered or shown from an odd perspective, bodies become one with their backdrops or seem overwhelmed by their surroundings, and mysterious animals proliferate. Among a Thousand Treasures illustrates how objects selected from El Museo’s collection also participate in the creation of a visual feast that parallels the unusual, symbolic, subconscious and extravagant narratives celebrated in the literary history of the hemisphere. Pre-Columbian myths, surrealist tales, oral histories and the works of writers and poets all become important references for the interpretation of these works. Artists included in the exhibition are Julio Alpuy, Alberto Borea, Roberto Burle Marx, Catalina Chervin, Lissie Habié, Domingo Garcia, Hector Mendez-Caratini, Miguel Ocampo, Jose Clemente Orozco, Carlos Osorio, Cecilia Paredes, César Paternosto, Liliana Porter, Raquel Rabinovich, Miguel Río Branco, and German Tagle.
FEARLESS LATIN/X AMÉRICA: SIDA+VIOLENCIA+ACCIÓN
FEARLESS LATIN/X AMÉRICA: SIDA+VIOLENCIA+ACCIÓN is organized by Visual AIDS & Residency Unlimited’s 2017 Curatorial Resident Eugenio Echeverría at El Museo del Barrio.
FEARLESS LATIN/X AMÉRICA: SIDA+VIOLENCIA+ACCIÓN will be on display on the People’s Wall at the entrance to El Museo del Barrio’s exhibition galleries April 29 through June 11, highlighting narratives relating to HIV/AIDS and Latinx América. FEARLESS LATINX AMÉRICA will feature dissident narratives from Chile, Cuba, Mexico and the United States, integrating text, artwork, photography and documents. The display will establish a critical chronological analysis considering how HIV/AIDS has been understood by hegemonic structures as a way of affecting traditionally outraged groups, out of a local and global perspective and a postcolonial approach.
Eugenio’s FEARLESS LATIN/X AMÉRICA: SIDA+VIOLENCIA+ACCIÓN presents itself in dialogue with Group Material’s well-known AIDS Timeline, originally displayed in 1989 at the Berkeley University Art Museum and recently reconsidered by former Group Material members Julie Ault and Doug Ashford, published for dOCUMENTA (13).
The range of materials in the FEARLESS LATIN/X AMÉRICA: SIDA+VIOLENCIA+ACCIÓN will include creative responses, public policy facts, reproductions of political speeches by public officials, media publications, scientific publications, statistic data, Latin-American literature, and artwork reproductions. Seeking a critical reading on the evolution of discourses around the culture of HIV/AIDS, the project will focus on three nodes: Identity as it relates to links within community; the institutionalization of systemic violence towards vulnerable communities through public policies, science and media; and dissident narratives correlating United States neocolonialism and the response from Latin-American countries to the HIV/AIDS crisis.
FEARLESS LATIN/X AMÉRICA: SIDA+VIOLENCIA+ACCIÓN is presented by Visual AIDS in collaboration with Residency Unlimited.
Eugenio Echeverría lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico, where he is the founder and director of Border Cultural Center. Since 2006, Border Cultural Center has coordinated over 100 interdisciplinary exhibitions and site-specific interventions. Highlights include QUEER UP! (DYKES, FAGS, WEIRDOS & YOU), a 12 month program of residencies, seminars, exhibitions and more considering LGBTQI identities, in collaboration with Laos Salazar; MULTIVERSO TRANS, a four day conference on trans identities conceptualized in collaboration with artists and trans activists focusing on violence, sex work, access to healthcare, legislative reforms and the autonomy of trans individuals, including LO QUE SE VE NO SE PREGUNTA, the first Mexican exhibition on trans identities, curated with Tania Pomar, Susana Vargas and Laos Salaza; and the upcoming project HACKING THE CITY, fostering discussion on civil disobedience in urban contexts, directed by Edith Medina.
videoarte | Rotative Repository of Latin American Video Art: Mono Canal
This exhibition explores the work of Latin American video artists and their different approaches to the single-channel format. The work on display ranges from pieces inspired by documentary or visual anthropology to others that eschew narrative structure for an approach more akin to visual poetry or performance. Curated by Hernan Rivera Luque.
The exhibited artists represent the strongest trends in the Latin American video art tradition. Their work fully embrace contemporary production techniques and conceptual approaches. Together they exemplify the multicultural discourse and critical thinking that have always been present in the complex identity of the Latin American countries, with incisive commentary on the historic migrations and political changes of the region as well as on topics such as gender, identity, politics and power.
In an attempt to convey the vitality of contemporary Latin American video art, this exhibition presents the work of established artists alongside the most exciting work from the new generation of video artists.
Participating artists: Maricruz Alarcón, Francisca Benitez, Alberto Borea, Nat Castañeda, Javier Castro, Lionel Cruet, Marcos Chaves, Gianfranco Foschino, Ignacio Gatica, Eduardo Gil, Alfredo Jaar, Joiri Minaya, Iván Navarro, Crack Rodriguez and Margarita Sanchez
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Repositorio rotativo de video arte latinoamericano mono canal – Edición El Museo del Barrio
Esta exposición explora el trabajo de video artistas latinoamericanos y sus diferentes de aproximación al formato mono canal. El trabajo en exhibición abarca desde piezas inspiradas por lo documental o la antropología visual hasta otras que evitan la estructura narrativa por un enfoque más afín a la poesía visual o el performance.
Los artistas expuestos representan las tendencias más fuertes de la tradición latinoamericana de video arte. Sus obras abarcan plenamente las técnicas de producción y conceptualización contemporáneas. Juntos ejemplifican el discurso multicultural y el pensamiento crítico que siempre han estado presentes en la compleja identidad de los países latinoamericanos, con comentarios sobre las migraciones históricas y los cambios políticos de la región, así como sobre temas de género, identidad, política y poder.
En un intento por transmitir la vitalidad del videoarte latinoamericano contemporáneo, esta exposición presenta la obra de artistas establecidos junto a la obra de nuevas generaciones de video artistas.
Artistas participantes: Maricruz Alarcón, Francisca Benítez, Alberto Borea, Nat Castañeda, Javier Castro, Marcos Chaves, Gianfranco Foschino, Ignacio Gatica, Eduardo Gil, Alfredo Jaar, Joiri Minaya, Iván Navarro, Crack Rodríguez y Margarita Sánchez.
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unoxuno is a series of solo projects for contemporary art at El Museo del Barrio. They focus on a single work or installation by a single artist or collaborative group.
The curator would like to thank New Latin Wave Festival for their support on this project.
unoXuno: Hugo X. Bastidas: Historical Portraits
These portraits are about empowerment, equal rights and respect. I am not rewriting history but asking what if there was mutual respect and exchange instead of destruction, subjugation and opposition?
I have had concerns with people being unable, for one reason or another, to participate in our so-called high cultural experience. Art museums, midtown galleries, blue chip galleries, biennials, art fairs, and similar venues have a feeling of exclusivity and not by their own virtue or volition. Regardless of the reason, I felt that if I would reproduce my paintings onto vinyl, I could bring the work out to the neighborhood. Incorporating it into the visual vernacular on storefronts, sides of buildings, interiors, and other unexpected places, it would seem comfortable there and hopefully be appreciated as “ours.” Even if the artworks are copies and temporary, this outreach is in part about some of the same issues I address in my art: inclusion, fairness and liberties that are also concerns of the ordinary people living in neighborhoods across the metro area. – Hugo X. Bastidas
Works by the artist are displayed at various locations in East Harlem. Organized by the artist with El Museo del Barrio and the tireless assistance of Zugeiy Yepez and Suellisse Acevedo. Courtesy of the artist and Nohra Haime Gallery and generously hosted by our El Barrio partners:
Harleys Smoke Shack, 355 East 116th Street, New York, NY, 10029
El Nuevo Caridad, 2257 Second Avenue, New York, N.Y., 10029
Sandy, 2261 Second Avenue, New York, N.Y., 10035
El Tapatio, 209 East 116th Street, New York, N.Y., 10029
La Taqueria Del Barrio, 2327 First Avenue, New York, N.Y., 10035
Guajillo Mexican Kitchen, 2277 First Avenue, New York, N.Y., 10035
El Agave Deli and Grocery, 218 East 116th Street, New York, N.Y., 10029
ELN Corporation, 183 East 111th Street, New York, NY 10029
Pipo’s Mexican Restaurant, 166 East 118th Street #3, New York, NY 10035
Mexico Travel, 238 East 116th Street # 1, New York, NY 10029
Featured image: Detail of Hugo Bastidas, Maria Tallchief, 2015; oil on linen; 60 x 40 in; Courtesy of the Nohra Haime Gallery.
unoxuno is a series of solo projects for contemporary art at El Museo del Barrio. They focus on a single work or installation by a single artist or collaborative group. unoxuno presents the work of local artists in alternative public spaces at the museum, the lobby and El Café, for an entire year. Invited artists are asked to propose a work for these designated areas. Artists featured in the past in this series are COPE2 (b. 1968, South Bronx, New York) and Indie184 (b. 1980, Puerto Rico), Manuel Acevedo (b. 1964, Newark, New Jersey), and Sarah E. Zapata (b. 1988, Corpus Christi, Texas), Joiri Minaya (b. 1990, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic), Ernest Concepcíon (b. 1978, Manila, Philippines), and Lina Puerta (b. Englewood, New Jersey).
unoxuno: Melissa Calderón
Self taught multimedia artist Melissa Calderón create bodies of conceptual work around themes exploring social and political landscapes; drawing upon historical and philosophical references of power, fragility and perception. She has exhibited her work at El Museo del Barrio, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, The Queens Museum, Socrates Sculpture Park, The Portland Museum of Art, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Arsenal de la Puntilla and Galeria 20/20 in Puerto Rico, Art in Odd Places Festival, and SmackMellon among others. She has been included in such books as Frescos, 50 contemporary artists from Puerto Rico, Strange Material: Storytelling through Textile, and EMERGENCY INDEX VOL. 4 ‘s annual performance publication. Currently, she is a recipient of a NYC Percent for Art commission to be permanently installed in the South Bronx and is currently showing work at The Rockefeller Foundation in NYC and The African American Museum in Philadelphia. She is born and bred in the Bronx.
unoxuno is a series of solo projects for contemporary art at El Museo del Barrio. They focus on a single work or installation by a single artist or collaborative group. unoxuno presents the work of local artists in alternative public spaces at the museum, the lobby and El Café, for an entire year. Invited artists are asked to propose a work for these designated areas.
Artists featured in the past in this series are COPE2 (b. 1968, South Bronx, New York) and Indie184 (b. 1980, Puerto Rico), Manuel Acevedo (b. 1964, Newark, New Jersey), and Sarah E. Zapata (b. 1988, Corpus Christi, Texas), Joiri Minaya (b. 1990, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic), Ernest Concepcíon (b. 1978, Manila, Philippines), and Lina Puerta (b. Englewood, New Jersey)
unoxuno: Miguel Trelles
Miguel Trelles is a Puerto Rican painter/printmaker actively engaged since 2006 in curating a yearly visual arts exhibition, Borimix, at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural and Educational Center on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Trelles’ own chino-latino painting series recontextualizes classic Chinese painting along with Pre-Columbian and Latin American imagery. An adjunct professor of Studio Art in various colleges in New York sand elsewhere, Trelles holds a B.A. in Art History and Studio Art at Brown University and an M.F.A. (1995) from Hunter College. The work of Miguel Trelles has been exhibited in Rio de Janeiro, Lima, San Juan, Santo Domingo, Havana, Tegucigalpa, Buenos Aires, and Paris, among others. Trelles’ paintings have been acquired by several permanent collections such as those in El Museo del Barrio and Deutsche Bank in New York and in El Museo de Arte de Ponce and the Institue of Puerto Rican Culture in Puerto Rico.
unoxuno is a series of solo projects for contemporary art at El Museo del Barrio. They focus on a single work or installation by a single artist or collaborative group. unoxuno presents the work of local artists in alternative public spaces at the museum, the lobby and El Café, for an entire year. Invited artists are asked to propose a work for these designated areas.
Artists featured in the past in this series are COPE2 (b. 1968, South Bronx, New York) and Indie184 (b. 1980, Puerto Rico), Manuel Acevedo (b. 1964, Newark, New Jersey), and Sarah E. Zapata (b. 1988, Corpus Christi, Texas), Joiri Minaya (b. 1990, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic), Ernest Concepcíon (b. 1978, Manila, Philippines), and Lina Puerta (b. Englewood, New Jersey).
BEATRIZ SANTIAGO MUÑOZ: A Universe of Fragile Mirrors
El Museo del Barrio announces the exhibition A Universe of Fragile Mirrors, a solo exhibition on the work of Beatriz Santiago Muñoz(b. 1972, San Juan, Puerto Rico; lives in San Juan). The exhibition is organized by the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) and curated by María Elena Ortiz. Through a series of films and videos, A Universe of Fragile Mirrors captures the ironies of post-colonial conditions in the Caribbean—specifically in Haiti and Puerto Rico. Focusing on indigenous cosmologies, post-military spaces, and syncretic religions from the Caribbean, Santiago Muñoz borrows techniques from performance, film, visual ethnography, and anthropology, to document specific communities and public sites in order to generate her own bricolage -an alternative story about a popular Haitian market, or a newly discovered archeological site in Puerto Rico.
The exhibit will consist of films on continuous play, portraying Santiago Muñoz’s own interpretation of the realities in Haiti and Puerto Rico. Influenced by experimental cinema, she relies on observational research to generate non-linear narratives that challenge the boundaries between documentary and fiction. Santiago Muñoz’s characters are not professional actors, but instead everyday people who have direct experiences with the sites portrayed in her works. “The process is more experiential,”Santiago Muñoz explains. The result is a captivating piece representing daily events and life on the islands through an audiovisual language.Each video carries its own story and speaks to daily life and the traditional myths engrained in Caribbean culture.“Beatriz produces compelling images that provoke new interpretations on the realities of the Caribbean experience,” explains PAMM Curator María Elena Ortiz.
In addition, as part of the concurrent exhibition a glyph, a tool, an icon, El Museo has invited Santiago Muñoz to explore El Museo’s collection of over 8,000 objects and select a group of works that connect to her ideas, her films, her approach to making art and other real or symbolic affinities. Acting as curator, Santiago Muñoz has selected works from the permanent collection that include Hector Mendez-Caratini’s photographs of Taino petroglyphs, Ana Mendieta’s polaroids of her performance Body Tracks, a selection of destroyed film works by El Museo’s founder Raphael Montañez Ortiz, and works by Nuyorican artists including Marcos Dimas.
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz: A Universe of Fragile Mirrors is the third exhibition of El Museo’s five-year series highlighting Latina artists.
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz: A Universe of Fragile Mirrors is organized by Pérez Art Museum Miami Assistant Curator, María Elena Ortiz.
The exhibition is made possible with major support from The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, Series Sponsor of El Museo del Barrio’s Women Artists series. Additional support from the New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito through the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Support for the exhibition catalogue provided by Galería Agustina Ferreyra.
a glyph, a tool, an icon: Beatríz Santiago Muñoz selects from El Museo’s Collections
El Museo has invited the featured artist, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, to mine El Museo’s collections of over 8,000 objects to select works that connect to her ideas, her films, her way of working and other narratives of symbolic importance.
She notes: Some of this work, such as the early films of Raphael Montañez Ortiz or the sculpture of Marcos Dimas, follows a line of thought from material and formal experimentation to mystical thought or vice-versa. Others look at the ways in which a place and a body is marked, mapped and drawn; from pipelines to petroglyphs. There are prints, mostly from the 70s and early 80s that play with simple icons: star, island map, scarab. They seem to me to be drawn from a language of abstraction that is a lot older and deeper than the 20th century.
Recently, I have made films that deal with the fraught relationship of politics to aesthetics and about the unspectacular nature of freedom, with Carlos Irizarry and Elizam Escobar respectively. Their work in the collection is very different from each other—one is the deeply personal work of the artist while in prison while the other’s raw material is the mediated political image.
Finally, there are the carved and shaped Taíno objects: spheres, petal-shaped hand axes, a cosmic twin amulet, pestles and phallic objects. We have no certainty about their use or their meaning, and yet we can hold them and wonder about the process of making them. Through the objects we may tenuously hold in our mind the metaphysics that gave birth to them.
El Museo del Barrio’s Women Artists Retrospective Series
In recognizing the historical exclusion of women from the art professions, which has directly contributed to an international museum culture predisposed to male artists, El Museo del Barrio is resolved to challenge this gender bias, within our means and within our walls, by organizing a retrospective or major survey of works by outstanding women artists—one in each fiscal year.
The surveys will span decades of an artist’s career, occupy the majority of the gallery space in the museum, and be accompanied by public programs and a book publication with new scholarship that positions and conveys the import of the artist’s contributions to the field.