La Jornada: Myth and disobedience

There are artists who make the world visible. Others reveal what the world prefers to keep silent about. Belkis Ayón (Havana, Cuba, 1967-1999) chose to show what remains hidden. He understood that the true mystery of art does not lie in what is visible, but in what a society decides to silence. Therefore, his images do not illustrate a story: they unearth it. Each engraving arises from a place where memory and oblivion coexist. In front of his work, the viewer has the impression that the questions matter more than the answers.

On July 16, the exhibition was inaugurated at the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (MALBA). Myth and disobediencededicated to Belkis Ayón, one of the most unique female voices in Latin American engraving of the 20th century. The exhibition brings together seven works belonging to the Malba-Costantini Collection and offers the opportunity to get closer to an artist who made graphics a space for reflection and resistance.

Belkis Ayón used calligraphy as an act of revelation. From a matrix constructed with paper, sandpaper, resins and other materials, he created large-format compositions where lights and shadows seem to guard a secret. In his hands, the material ceased to be a technical resource and acquired its own voice: colography transcended the procedure and became a form of thought and visual poetry. The subtlety of whites, blacks and grays ended up defining the unmistakable seal of one of the most original proposals of Latin American engraving.

From a very young age he oriented his work towards the Afro-Cuban spiritual tradition and found new questions in the Abakuá tradition. Originally from the Calabar region, in the southeast of Nigeria, this tradition arrived in Cuba in the 19th century and preserves a complex universe of myths and rituals. Among these, the story of Sikán stands out, a woman condemned to silence and sacrifice, whose figure Belkis Ayón recovered from a story transmitted for generations by oral tradition. In his work, Sikán becomes the center of a profound reflection on power, exclusion and sacrifice, and transcends his origin to reveal essential aspects of the human condition that continue to dialogue with our present.

At the Higher Institute of Art in Havana he studied engraving until 1991. After his training, he also approached teaching while continuing to make his way in an artistic scene that soon recognized the strength and uniqueness of his work. International recognition arrived and, with it, the certainty that Ayón was forging his own language in contemporary graphics.

The strength of his work lies in his ability to turn that myth into a universal experience. His engravings speak of those who have been left out of history, of the voices that survive the silence and of a memory that refuses to disappear. There is no stridency in his compositions, but rather a contained intensity that invites the viewer to stop and look carefully.

Made during the complex 90s in Cuba, these works dialogue with a time marked by uncertainty, scarcity and the collapse of old ideological certainties. Without resorting to explicit denunciation, Belkis Ayón made art a space of freedom from which he questioned power, intolerance and fear.

The exhibition confirms the validity of a creator whose work continues to grow over time. His engravings not only belong to the history of Cuban art; They are part of the artistic heritage of Latin America because they remind us that memory resists oblivion and that art can return a face and a voice to those who were condemned to disappear from the story.

His last exhibition during his lifetime took place in Los Angeles, California, and was titled Unrest. After his death, that name seemed to take on another meaning: that of a farewell that no one then could read as such.

In 1999, when he was just 32 years old, his death interrupted an exceptional career. However, the intensity of his creation remains intact: his images continue to summon us to look where others avert their eyes and remind us that art can reveal what history tries to leave in the shadows.

Leaving this exhibition does not mean leaving a room, but rather taking a question with you. Perhaps the task of art is different: not to close the mystery, but to keep it open. Belkis Ayón understood this paradox. Perhaps that is why his absence has never been complete. Some artists do not abandon their work: they remain in it and, from there, continue looking at us.