Belkis Ayón and the Cuba-West Africa Connection – Repeating Islands


Ethel-Ruth Tawe (Modern And América Latina) focuses on Belkis Ayón’s work. “Together with her ongoing displaying at The Milk of Goals (Venice Biennale), and a recently-ended retrospective on the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, there’s a revived curiosity in Belkis Ayón’s work. However who’re the Abakuá secret society, a central topic within the artist’s work, and the way did their Afrodiasporic historical past and custom affect Ayón? What does it imply for the Abakuá to be given international visibility by somebody who was banned from taking part as a lady?”

Engraved, chalk-white eyes illuminate obsidian tableaus, as a bunch of ghostly figures convert spectators into the spectated — each gazing in silence. I lookup on the gallery wall, studying the phrase “Abakuá”, and I’m instantly transported to Casa de África in Outdated Havana, Cuba, the place I first heard of this secret society and its connection to my homeland Cameroon. Surveying the big format scenographic works, typically unframed with symmetric cut-outs or mounted on inclining platforms, I witness a collective invitation to ponder our personal ascension into different planes. Cuban artist Belkin Ayón’s oeuvre is an train in mythmaking and syncretism; an area to decode chronologies and metaphors of African (re)creativeness within the diaspora. In some ways, Cuban and Afrodiasporic tradition at-large live embodiments of syncretic observe: the amalgamation of various cultures, religions, and faculties of thought to encode new programs. In her abrupt but prolific profession, Ayón provided an in depth counter-portrait of the life and afterlife of Sikan, a lady sacrificed within the legend of Abakuá: an all-male secret society who arrested the artist‘s creativeness. Utilizing allegorical markings and non secular iconography, Ayón feedback on social, human, and materials circumstances, whereas exhibiting mastery of her labor-intensive printmaking method referred to as collography.

The epic of Abakuá stretches past the geographies of Cuba, originating in modern-day southwestern Cameroon and the Cross River states of Nigeria. These roots/routes are vital in cautiously studying Ayón’s works, to keep away from erasing the histories embedded in her visible language. Abakuá is one in every of many African religious practices transported within the minds and our bodies of enslaved individuals to the Americas. Like Candomblé in Brazil, Vodou in Haiti, or Santeria, these practices had been preserved and encoded in chants, dance, and immaterial tradition. They had been modalities of resistance to tried dehumanization by slavery. Abakuá distinguishes itself as an unique and highly-organized fraternity, not faith, though a few of its inflexible standards have dissolved lately. It’s grounded in rules of mutual-aid, self-discipline, and governance, with only some males accessing the establishment’s inside mechanics.

The title Abakuá is a creolization of “Abakpa”, an space in southeast Nigeria the place the society was lively. It’s the area of the slave port and historical Kingdom of Calabar (Akwa Akpa) known as Carabalí in Cuba. In Nigeria and Cameroon, Abakuá is named Ékpè (leopard) societies. Since arriving in Cuba within the early 1800s, the society continues to be lively in the present day with over 20,000 members in Havana, Matanzas, and Cardenas, who preserve their very own language and legal guidelines. Moninas (initiates) belong to lineages with tratados (origin myths or treaties) linked to their African counterparts: Efik Ebuton (Èfìk individuals), Eforisún Efó (Efut individuals), & Orú Ápapa (Úrúrán or Oron individuals). Linguistic syncretism, or creolization, turned crucial encryptions and preservations of African oral custom inside the Spanish colony. Dia de Tres Reyes (Three Kings Day), the earliest celebration allowing African descendants to publicly exhibit their tradition, has been the place Abakuá custom is extra extensively memorialized. Abakuá has imprinted an indelible mark on the Cuban cultural panorama, together with danzón, rumba music, and the Nineteen Twenties Afrocubanismo creative motion, for instance. Nonetheless, it’s nonetheless incessantly stigmatized and colloquially referred to as Ñañigos, an arguably pejorative time period linked to criminality in Cuban in style tradition. Like many debated accounts of oral histories, there stay a number of variations of those myths, codifications, and their chronologies.

Although Ayón herself was an atheist, she appropriated Abakuá lore in her work to supply a feminist dialetic, in session with members of the society with whom she nurtured shut skilled relationships. Ayón’s object of affection from the origin delusion was princess Sikán, who was sentenced to demise by her group after revealing esoteric data to her lover from a neighboring nation. The secrets and techniques had been transmitted by a fish’s voice “ekué”, a reincarnation of the previous king Obón Tanzé, whom Sikán encountered by probability at a sacred river. In some ways Sikán’s story turned a cautionary story and additional grounds for banishing ladies from Abakuá as they had been perceived to stir battle — a story akin to the unique sin of Eve within the Bible. [. . . ]

There’s nothing silent about Ayón’s works; a way of drama unfolds in her compositions very like a panoramic Renaissance portray. Sikan stands within the midst of males, a commanding presence in daring and delicate gestures. In La Cena (The Supper), Ayón juxtaposes the Abakuá iriampó (initiation banquet) and the composition of the Euro-classical Final Supper, a ceremonial banquet that preceded Christ’s crucifixion. Christ is changed by Sikán, with ladies disciples by his aspect. The figures protrude from the perimeters inviting the viewer to take part on this syncretic and disruptive counter-narrative. Ayón’s life-size tableaus exhibit Judeo-Christian architectural qualities of stained glass home windows, gothic arches, and vaulted ceilings. They seem transcendental, like altars or a theatrical staging of a ritual. The structural qualities could communicate to hierarchies and stratification of political energy, reflective of the existential disaster of Cuban society within the Nineties. Ayón’s work visually dismantles hegemonic and patriarchal constructions, whereas typically (re)membering haunting histories. Abakuá was actually a automobile for the historicization of African custom and resistance to cultural subjugation. It was operationalized as an anti-colonial automobile in opposition to Spanish rule, after the formation calbidos (nation teams) throughout the colony. Though intently paralleled with the unique Ékpè mannequin, Abakuá is usually likened to cimarrón (maroon) insurgent traditions of the Caribbean. For me, Ayón was in a position to acknowledge, embrace and critique the function of all establishments at play. She was in fixed dialog with the previous, current and future, from the positionality of a Black Cuban girl. [. . . ]

For full article, see https://amlatina.contemporaryand.com/editorial/belkis-ayon-and-the-cuba-west-africa-connection/

[Belkis Ayón (1967-1999), Installation view at the 59th Venice Biennale, La Pesca /Fishing, collography on paper, 1989. Photo: Contemporary And América Latina, Eduardo Nasi. Courtesy of The Belkis Ayón Estate.]



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