Past Archives - Page 4 of 8 - El Museo del Barrio

Zilia Sánchez: Soy Isla (I Am an Island)

Zilia Sánchez: Soy Isla (I Am an Island) is the first museum retrospective of the prolific, innovative, and yet largely unknown artist Zilia Sánchez (b. 1926, Havana – lives and works in San Juan). The exhibition features over 40 works from the early 1950s to the present, including paintings, works on paper, shaped canvases, sculptural pieces, graphic illustrations, and ephemera. The retrospective traces Sánchez’s artistic journey from her early days in Cuba to her extended travels in Europe in the 1950s and residence in New York in the 1960s, and finally her move to Puerto Rico, where she has lived and worked since the early 1970s.

Learn more about Zilia’s artistic trajectory and full chronology >

Zilia Sánchez: Soy Isla is accompanied by a major publication and newly commissioned artist’s documentary about her life and practice.

Organized by The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Curated by Dr. Vesela Sretenović, Phillips Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.

The presentation of Zilia Sánchez: Soy Isla (I Am an Island) at El Museo del Barrio is supported by The Jacques & Natasha Gelman Foundation, series sponsor of El Museo del Barrio’s Women ’s Retrospective Series. With additional support from The Isabel and Agustín Coppel Collection, and Galerie Lelong & Co.

An Emphasis on Resistance: 2019 CIFO Grants & Commissions Program Exhibition

In partnership with CIFO, El Museo del Barrio will host newly commissioned works of awardees: Emerging Artists – Susana Pilar Delahante, María José Machado, Claudia Martínez Garay, and Oscar Abraham Pabón; Mid-Career Artists – Leyla Cárdenas, Ana Linnemann, Yucef Merhi, and Nicolas Paris; and Achievement Award recipient – Cecilia Vicuña. An important catalyst for the presentation of new works and a meaningful platform for advanced research on Latinx and Latin American art, this collaboration between CIFO and El Museo del Barrio aims to consider the act of resistance in both Latin America and in its diaspora.

The annual Grants & Commissions Program, now in its 17th iteration and CIFO’s signature initiative, is an embodiment of the foundation’s mission to foster, support, and exhibit innovative work by Latin American artists. Nominated by an esteemed group of curators, the awarded artists exemplify the breadth and depth of contemporary art production throughout Latin America, engaging with diverse contemporary themes across media including video, performance, multimedia installation, sculpture, and found material, among others.

Culture and the People: El Museo del Barrio, 1969-2019

In celebration of its 50th anniversary, El Museo del Barrio presents Culture and the People: El Museo del Barrio, 1969-2019, a two-part exhibition featuring selections from the Permanent Collection and a timeline contextualizing the history of the institution with related archival materials. The exhibition will reflect on the institution’s activist origins and pioneering role as a cultural and educational organization dedicated to presenting and preserving Latinx and Latin American art and culture. The exhibition borrows its title from an essay penned by one of the Museum’s founders and its first director Raphael Montañez Ortíz, who outlined his concept for the institution in a 1971 article published in Art in America.

In addition to the two part-exhibition Culture and the People, El Museo will initiate a cycle of exhibitions dedicated to the Museum’s Permanent Collection in 2020. The cycle will focus on specific works from the collection, including room-size installations and in-depth bodies of work, enabling El Museo’s curators to work directly with artists, scholars, and conservators to uncover new research and grant further public access to the Museum’s Permanent Collection.

PART I | Selections from the Permanent Collection

Organized in thematic sections, Culture and the People features selections from the Permanent Collection that explores the legacy of El Museo del Barrio through the concepts of Roots, Resistance, and Resilience.

In Roots, artworks will be presented that address El Museo’s formation within the social and political context of 1969, and its relationship with the artists and local community of El Barrio (East Harlem). This section will also take a more expansive perspective to cultural roots, through works that reference colonial and indigenous ancestries.

In direct response to the Museum’s activist origins, the section devoted to Resistance includes artworks related to protest, gestures of solidarity, dictatorship, and exile. Created in homage to national heroes and fallen martyrs, as well as commemorating specific events, these pieces address historical political grievances and relate to contemporary events such as the ongoing border crisis.

The final section, Resilience, recognizes El Museo’s ongoing commitment to its mission. In this section, works related to the construction and expression of self- identity will be displayed, alongside images that reflect a sometimes subversive or humorous method of survival. This section will culminate with a presentation of artworks that speak to personal and collective resilience, as well as the continuation of cultural traditions.

Each section will feature artists of diverse cultural backgrounds and generations, and will range from indigenous art and artifacts to contemporary paintings and installation art. A number of the pieces on view will relate to multiple sections, inviting audiences to recognize echoes and dialogues between the pieces on display. The exhibition will feature new acquisitions as well as artworks that have never been publicly presented, in addition to artworks familiar to El Museo audiences.

Featured Artists

ADÁL, Ignacio Aguirre, ASCO, Myrna Báez, Diógenes Ballester, Tony Bechara, Charles Biasiny-Rivera, Tania Bruguera, Ramón Cabán, Roger Cabán, Rodríguez Calero, Luis Camnitzer, Martín Chambi, Papo Colo, Luis Cruz Azaceta, Felipe Dante, Margarita Deida and Piedro Pietri, Ana de la Cueva, Milagros de la Torre, Perla de León, Bartolomé de las Casas, Marcos Dimas, Nicolás Dumit- Estévez, León Ferrari, Antonio Frasconi, Coco Fusco, Carlos Garaicoa, Domingo García, iliana emilia garcía, Arturo García Bustos, Flor Garduño, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Félix González-Torres, Muriel Hasbún, Pablo Helguera, Ester Hernández, Gilberto Hernández, Carmen Herrera, Lorenzo Homar, Graciela Iturbide, Alfredo Jaar, Ivelisse Jiménez, Charles Juhász-Alvarado, Shaun “El. C.” Leonardo, Richard A. Lou, Miguel Luciano, Antonio Maldonado, Carlos Marichal, Hiram Maristany, Antonio Martorell, Leopoldo Méndez, Héctor Méndez Caratini, Raphael Montañez Ortíz, Francisco Mora, Arnaldo Morales, José Morales, Rachelle Mozman, Isidoro Ocampo, Francisco Manuel Oller y Cestero, Pepón Osorio, Manuel “Neco” Otero, César Paternosto, Dulce Pinzón, Miguel Rio Branco, Rubén Rivera Aponte, Rafael Rivera-Rosa, Arnaldo Roche-Rabell, Félix Rodríguez Báez, Freddy Rodríguez, José A. Rosa Castellanos, Lotty Rosenfeld, Edgar Ruiz Zapata, Fernando Salicrup, Juan Sánchez, Jorge Soto Sánchez, Taíno Culture, Taller de Gráfica Popular, Rigoberto Torres, Rubén Torres-Llorca, Nitza Tufiño, Rafael Tufiño, Patssi Valdez, Vargas-Suárez Universal, Mariana Yampolsky, the Young Lords Party, and Alfredo Zalce.

PART II | An Institutional Timeline

Complementing the Permanent Collection, El Museo del Barrio presents a second display tracing the historical and cultural trajectory of the institution since 1969. Expanding on previous research about El Museo’s institutional past, the presentation reveals different moments in the Museum’s history as it relates to its leadership and staff, its various locations, and key exhibitions and programs throughout its first five decades. Archival documentation including photographs, posters, invitations, exhibition catalogues, and other ephemera will supplement a detailed timeline to further illustrate and contextualize critical moments in the museum’s history.

Lucio Fontana: Spatial Environment (1968)

El Museo del Barrio is pleased to present artist Lucio Fontana’s 1968 Spatial Environment [Ambiente Spaziale]. Conceived in relation to the artist’s innovative Spatialism movement, starting from 1949, Fontana’s Spatial Environments are immersive environments that viewers enter and navigate. Reconstructed with the authorization of the Fondazione Lucio Fontana, the all-white, labyrinthine Spatial Environment (1968) at El Museo will follow the exact specifications of the artist’s final work in the series, originally conceived and presented at documenta 4 in Kassel, Germany shortly before Fontana’s death.

The installation coincides with the exhibition at The Met Breuer Lucio Fontana: On the Threshold (on view January 23 through April 14, 2019), curated by Iria Candela, Estrellita B. Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art in The Met’s Department of Modern and Contemporary Art.

The presentation of Lucio Fontana: Spatial Environment (1968) at El Museo del Barrio is made possible with support from Angela Westwater.

BEFORE YOUR VISIT

We invite you to enter and walk inside Spatial Environment (1968). Please read carefully and follow the guidelines below to help preserve the integrity of the installation:

• Do not touch the walls or sculptural elements.
• A maximum of two people are allowed inside at a time.
• Shoes are not allowed inside the installation.
• Please wear socks or use the disposable shoe guards available. High heels are not allowed.
• Please listen to the directions of museum guards.
• Children must be accompanied by an adult.

Anyone who wishes to access the works at all times does so at their own risk and responsibility. El Museo del Barrio shall therefore be held free of any liability and/or harm to visitors and their belongings.

Please be aware, entrance into the installation is not advisable for anyone uncomfortable in closed spaces; those who suffer from claustrophobia, panic attacks, or are susceptible to disorientation; or those with alternate physical mobility.

ABOUT LUCIO FONTANA

Argentine born Lucio Fontana (b. 1899 – d. 1968) is recognized for his explorations of energy and dimensionality, as reflected in his characteristic approach of punching holes and cutting tears into the surfaces of his paintings, sculptures, and installations. The child of Italian parents, Fontana was born in Rosario, Argentina, and moved back and forth between Italy and Argentina throughout his life. After beginning his career as a figurative sculptor in Rosario, the artist briefly studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera before returning to Argentina on the cusp of WWII. There, with Jorge Romero Brest and Jorge Larco, he founded the Altamira art school in Buenos Aires, and with his students published the 1946 Manifiesto Blanco. This document forms the incipient manifestation of Fontana’s theory of Spatialism, which he would continue to develop upon his definitive return to Italy in 1947. A well-recognized artistic figure within his lifetime, Fontana exhibited his work at the Venice Biennale and Documenta 4. His art is included in major collections throughout the globe.

Liliana Porter: Other Situations

Other Situations is a non-linear survey of Porter’s work from 1973 to 2018, which explores the conflicting boundaries between reality and fiction, and the ways in which images are circulated and consumed. Organized by SCAD Museum of Art and curated by Humberto Moro, SCAD Curator of Exhibitions, this is the artist’s first museum solo show in New York City in more than 25 years. The exhibition highlights the fundamental distinction that Porter creates between the notions of “narrative” and “situation” in contrast to the structures implicit in most stories that suggest a relationship with time, and in which the artist is not interested. In her work, the past and future of an action becomes irrelevant in light of the urgency and absurdity of the problems faced by the figures portrayed. Sometimes paired in conversation or arranged in larger groups, Porter’s characters — a pantheon of cultural figures such as Elvis Presley, Che Guevara, Jesus, Mickey Mouse and Benito Juárez — evokes questions about representation, image dissemination and public life, and are particularly relevant in present times, when the fields of politics, spectacle and celebrity culture collide and merge. Among the significant pieces included in the exhibition are Porter’s 1970s photographs alluding to space and the body, and more recent works like the “Forced Labor” series, in which the artist utilizes miniature figurines to make a statement about reality, labor and self-awareness.

Along with the exhibition, this fall, Porter will present a new theater performance, a medium that she has explored in recent years in close collaboration with artist Ana Tiscornia. Specially commissioned for the occasion, the performance will be presented at the renowned performance art space, The Kitchen. In addition, El Museo del Barrio will produce a publication focusing on artist Liliana Porter’s theatrical output – the first of its kind– in an effort to further disseminate the artist’s work and legacy.

ABOUT LILIANA PORTER

Born in Argentina in 1941, Liliana Porter, originally educated in printmaking — a discipline that deeply influenced her practice — moved to New York in 1964, where she cofounded the New York Graphic Workshop with artists Luis Camnitzer and José Guillermo Castillo. Since then, Porter has worked in a variety of media including painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, assemblages, video, installation and, more recently, theater. Porter’s art has been exhibited in more than 35 countries in over 450 group shows, and is a part of public and private collections including El Museo del Barrio. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, and Sculpture Magazine, among other publications. In 2013, the Fundación Patricia Phelps de Cisneros published the book Liliana Porter in Conversation with Inés Katzenstein as part of the Conversaciones/Conversations series. Galleries in Europe, Latin America and the United States represent the artist.

Liliana Porter: Other Situations is made possible through major support from the Jacques & Natasha Gelman Foundation, series sponsor of El Museo del Barrio’s Women ’s Retrospective Series. Additional support is provided by Estrellita and Daniel Brodsky, and Patricia Marshall.

Down These Mean Streets: Community and Place in Urban Photography

The American city underwent unprecedented transformations after World War II. As middle-class populations shifted to the suburbs and new highways cut through thriving neighborhoods, many cities began to experience economic and social disintegration, especially in Black, Latino, and working class communities. Down These Mean Streets: Community and Place in Urban Photography unites the work of ten artists who critically reflect on the state of urban America primarily between the 1960s and early 1980s, when government initiatives that sought to address the needs of cities in crisis sparked public debate. The title is drawn from Piri Thomas’s classic 1967 memoir, Down These Mean Streets. Like Thomas, their work challenges perceptions of embattled cities and explores the human narratives that unfolded in communities across the United States.

This exhibition examines how Latino photographers, many of whom came of age in urban neighborhoods, frame their environment. They approach the street not as detached observers but as engaged participants by turning to portraiture, urbanscapes, serial photography, or unconventional manipulations of the photographic image. Many contribute to a long tradition of socially driven documentary photography. Others embrace conceptual strategies or use color photography to capture a less romantic image of the American city. Their work reexamines neighborhoods often viewed as places of social decline and affirms the strength of community in urban America.

Organized by E. Carmen Ramos, SAAM’s deputy chief curator and curator of Latino art, the exhibition explores the work of ten photographers. To read artist bios, click here.

Rather than approach the neighborhoods as detached observers, these artists deeply identified with their subject. Activist and documentary photographer Frank Espada captured humanizing portraits of urban residents in their decaying surroundings. Hiram Maristany and Winston Vargas lovingly captured street life in historic Latino neighborhoods in New York City, offering rare glimpses of bustling community life that unfolded alongside urban neglect and community activism. Working in Los Angeles, Oscar Castillo captured both the detritus of urban renewal projects and the cultural efforts of residents to shape their own neighborhoods. Perla de Leon’s poignant photographs of the South Bronx in New York—one of the most iconic blighted neighborhoods in American history—place into sharp relief the physical devastation of the neighborhood and the lives of the people who called it home.

John Valadez’s vivid portraits of stylish young people in East Los Angeles counter the idea of inner cities as places of crime. Camilo José Vergara and Anthony Hernandez adopt a cooler, conceptual approach in their serial projects, which return to specific urban sites over and over, inviting viewers to consider the passage of time in neighborhoods transformed by the urban crisis. The barren “concrete” landscapes of Ruben Ochoa and Manuel Acevedo pivot on unconventional artistic strategies such as the merging photography and drawing, to inspire a second look at the physical features of public space that shape the lives of urban dwellers.

QUEENIE: Selected artworks by female artists from El Museo del Barrio’s Collection

Hunter East Harlem Gallery (HEHG) at Hunter College and El Museo del Barrio are pleased to present the exhibition QUEENIE: Selected artworks by female artists from El Museo del Barrio’s Collection. The group exhibition features a selection of works from the East Harlem-based museum’s Permanent Collection that prompt a multifarious dialogue not only around society and gender but simultaneously refutes a homogenized view of Latinx art. With a particular focus on female artists from the Caribbean, Latin America, and the larger Latinx diaspora, QUEENIE explores the roles women have played in El Museo del Barrio’s history and its impact on the local East Harlem community.

Including works by Tania Bruguera, Margarita Cabrera, Maria Fernanda Cardoso, Melba Carillo, Marta Chilindron, Alessandra Expósito, Iliana Emilia Garcia, Dulce Gomez, Cristina Hernández Botero, Carmen Herrera, Jessica Kairé, Carmen Lomas Garza, Evelyn López de Guzmán, Anna Maria Maiolino, Ana Mendieta, Marina Núñez del Prado, Liliana Porter, Raquel Rabinovich, Scherezade, Nitza Tufiño, among others.

QUEENIE takes its title from a sculpture by Alessandra Expósito, a painted horse skull that illustrates an imagined story of a young girl and her pet horse. As part of the exhibition, HEHG has invited three NYC-based artists: Melissa Calderón, Alessandra Expósito, and Glendalys Medina to respond to the exhibition with a commissioned artwork that further explores the connections among the collecting process, societal change, and gendered experience.

QUEENIE is organized by Arden Sherman, Curator, Hunter East Harlem Gallery; Noel Valentin, Permanent Collection Manager, El Museo del Barrio; Elizaveta Shneyderman, Gallery Manager, Hunter East Harlem Gallery; and Olivia Gauthier, Gund Curatorial Fellow, Hunter College.

REVIVAL: Contemporary Pattern & Decoration

El Museo del Barrio, the Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture and the Bronx Council on the Arts present their first-ever joint exhibition titled REVIVAL: Contemporary Pattern and Decoration at the Longwood Art Gallery @ Hostos in the Bronx. Guest curated by Rocío Aranda-Alvarado, and a part of Hostos Community College’s 50th anniversary celebration, the group exhibition explores a renewed interest in pattern and decoration by contemporary artists in various media featuring works by 26 artists. Such interest builds upon a movement that developed in the 1970s, when artists began to explore the possibilities of pattern and focused on the repetition of color, line, and shape. The movement became known as “Pattern and Decoration,” or more generally “P & D.” In part, this was a response to the severity of the Minimalist movement that was dominated by large-scale works by male artists.

REVIVAL: Contemporary Pattern and Decoration reflects contemporary concerns of living artists who evoke both pattern and the body as forms of symbolic and visual language. The body acts not only as a bearer of crucial social information, but also as a reminder of its historic role in all kinds of patterns and other image-making, such as wallpaper, fabric design, porcelain objects, and silhouette portrait painting. Today, artists evoke the bodies linked to internet searches, glossy magazine images, historic works of art, and other cultural monuments. Geometric lines evoke the historical significance of abstraction and the endless possibilities of line and form in pattern to evoke a variety of ideas, physical reactions, and subsequent responses. Taken together, the artists presented here explore a broad range of aesthetic approaches to both the body and pattern as interconnected and meaningful elements of artistic production.

elmuseo@SVA: May Contain Moving Parts

In its second iteration, “elmuseo@SVA” represents a coming together of two New York institutions: El Museo del Barrio and the School of Visual Arts. Founded by artist Raphael Montañez Ortiz and local activists, parents and teachers in East Harlem, El Museo del Barrio’s original mission was to support the art and culture of Puerto Ricans in New York. By the early 1970s that mission expanded to include all of Latin American and Latino communities here.

May Contain Moving Parts brings together a varied group of works that focus on different kinds of mechanisms and systems.. In engineering applications, the phrase “may contain moving parts” is used as a cautionary statement. These words also signify that the motion of a mechanism or system may be affected by inertia and that it may change throughout various phases of its working movement. We can explore this as a kind of call to attention on change and adaptation, on movement and stillness.

The artists grouped together here relate to one another in their methods of approaching ideas around systems or motion, or in their choice of media, or in the expressive ends of their work. Here, we might see the use of sound or movement as symbolic language, the adaptation of a visceral object or complex scene to achieve a desired reaction. In some cases, they entice the viewer to become the player, the philosopher, or the activist. Landscape is rendered as both haunting pattern and oppressive atmosphere. An object may be de-contextualized and relieved of its intended function in order to play a different role. The artists consider the various signs of movement; explore possibilities of the meaning and function of objects or parts; and meditate on the relationship of place, motion, form and space to the individual.

We are grateful to the artists for their participation and generosity.

Graciela Cassel (2014), Willie Cole, Jon Gomez (2017), Franco Frontera, Jonas Lara (2012), Arnaldo Morales, Marylin Narota (2016), Aya Rodriguez-Izumi (2017), and Jennifer Santos (2012).

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

Graciela Cassel is a multimedia artist who works with video installations and sculpture to explore ideas of subjectivity, change and border politics. She was born in Buenos Aires, lives in New York City and has shown her work in solo and group exhibitions in the U.S., Argentina and the Netherlands. She received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York (2014), her MA from New York University (2012), and her BA from the Universidad de Buenos Aires (1980).

Willie Cole is a sculptor based in New York. His work has shown work at Montclair Art Museum (2006), University of Wyoming Art Museum (2006), the Tampa Museum of Art (2004), Miami Art Museum (2001), Bronx Museum of the Arts (2001) and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1998). In 2010, a survey exhibition of his work on paper (1975 – 2010) took place at the James Gallery and later traveled to many cities. In January 2013, “Complex Conversations: Willie Cole Sculptures and Wall Works” opened at the Albertine Monroe-Brown Gallery at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo.

Franco Frontera is a multimedia artist who works with painting and sound. He was born in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, and lives in New York City. He received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts (2016) and his BFA from the Universidad del Sagrado Corazón, Santurce, Puerto Rico (2013). He has exhibited his works at individual shows at the Flight Cult Gallery and the Calle Cerra, Puerto Rico (2014). He has also participated in group shows at venues such as the Caribbean Social Club (2016), The Lounge (2016), the Galeria Yemayá (2014) and the Flight Cult Gallery (2013), among others.

Jon Gomez is a Mexican-American multimedia artist based in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from the School of Visual Arts with an MFA in 2017. As an artist born in Los Angeles and raised in Mexico, his works travel freely between the universals of Southern California and the lived reality of Latin American communities. Landscapes that predate U.S. expansionism often feature in his recent installations—lands that frame the evolution of immigration, identity, and nationalism in 21st-century America.

Jonas Lara is a photographer, mixed-media artist and musician. Lara joined the U.S. Marines in 2000, started working as an artist in 2003, and has exhibited at several solo and group shows, including an individual exhibition at the Carnegie Art Museum Studio Gallery (2015). He received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts (2012) and his BFA from the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California.

Arnaldo Morales is a multimedia artist who works with industrial materials, low-tech manual devices and mechanical systems. Born in Puerto Rico, he has lived and worked in New York City since 1996. He has shown work at El Museo del Barrio, The Americas Society, and White Box (all in New York), the Galería de la Raza (San Francisco), and The Living Art Museum (Reykjavik, Iceland), among other venues.

Marilyn Narota combines art and psychology to produce socially engaged installations, sculptures and performance-based videos. She was born in Colombia and lives in New York City. She received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts (2016), her post- baccalaureate degree from the Maryland Institute College of Art (2013) and her BA from Williams College (2006). She is the founder of collaborative artist initiatives such as Sly Space, Kaur Studio, FussionArt Magazine and Artilade magazine. Her work has been exhibited at the School of Visual Arts, The Hole, El Museo de Los Sures, and Project for Empty Space.

Aya Rodriguez-Izumi is a multimedia artist who works with sculpture, music, installation and performance. She has spent her life moving back and forth between New York City and her birthplace of Okinawa, Japan, and her work often deals with the topics of socio-cultural identity and communication. Since graduating from Parsons, the New School for Design, she has been included in various group shows and has shown at such venues as MoCADA, The Knockdown Center, Free Candy and FLUX Art Fair. She is currently an MFA Fine Arts degree candidate at the School of Visual Arts.

Jenny Santos is a New York City-based multimedia artist who works predominantly in sculpture and installation. Her work often explores the tension between opinions, reality and the unstable, shifting appearances of daily life. Santos exhibited recent works at NURTUREart Gallery, New York (2014), and has participated in group exhibitions at the School of Visual Arts, and Project 165 in Toronto, Canada. She received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts (2012), and her BFA from the Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto (2007). She has received the Ontario Arts Council Visual Artist Grant (2014), among other awards.

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.

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