Untitled 4, 1996, 27 x 37 inches

BELKIS AYON - Notes and thoughts by Darryl Courturier

Belkis Ayón was, without question, one of the most important contemporary artists among the current generation living and working in Cuba. Her untimely suicide in September 1999, at the age of 32, took away a brilliant artist, master craftsman and technician working in a medium (collography) few artists the world-over work in today.

Belkis was also a visionary addressing issues of contemporary Cuban life and culture using a vocabulary she originally based on a Cuban secret society of men called Abakœa. The early work of the late 1980s and early 1990s was more literal in its interpretation and representation of the origins, rituals and symbolism of Abakœa. By the latter half of the 1990s, Belkis began introducing herself into the imagery as an onlooker and later as a more fully developed figure to begin addressing her own feelings about being a woman in her own daily world. At the time of her death, Belkis's own image was becoming more prominent, sometimes the sole figure in a work, describing very personal issues. What some of these issues were are still open to conjecture, as she took her secrets with her.

Continued on next page