Modern Art Oxford has an enviable curation record with exhibitions that spotlight zeitgeist artists and themes. I’ve particularly appreciated past shows highlighting the work of Rose Finn-Kelcey, Barbara Kruger, and Kiki Smith. Now reopened following a £2 million redesign of its ground and lower-ground floor spaces, which includes a new entrance space incorporating their shop, creative space, ground floor gallery, and ‘Club Together café; there are even more reasons to spend quality time in their spaces.
As part of The Platform Graduate Award 2024, ‘Tender Grounds’, in the new ground floor gallery, features new work from Katrina and Luca Dayanc (University of Reading), Ash Goller (Oxford Brookes University), and Jamie Bragg (Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford). The exhibition highlights the delicate and fragile qualities that connect the work of these four artists through a shared sense of tenderness, reflecting themes of vulnerability, sensitivity, and rawness. Through Bragg’s imagery drawn from archive photography, Bragg’s paintings engage with the current complexities of war in the Middle East. At the same time, Goller’s installation celebrates the support and sense of belonging found within the queer community of which he is part.
The main exhibition choice for the reopening of Modern Art Oxford is also the first institutional exhibition in the UK of work by Cuban artist Belkis Ayón (1967-1999). Ayón, whose work can also be seen at Tate Modern, was a Cuban artist and printmaker considered a pioneer in the printmaking world through her use of collography. By layering textured repurposed materials onto cardboard matrices, a form of collage, she was able to produce a vast range of tones, textures, and forms in large multi-panelled works. The exhibition includes film of Ayón using this process to create work, examples of which have now been seen at the Venice Biennale in 1993 and 2022, plus a retrospective at UCLA in 2016.
Her work is transgressive in that she reinterprets the traditions, rituals and beliefs of the Abakuá, a predominantly male Afro-Cuban religious group originating in the tribes and ritual traditions of West Africa, by focusing on the mythical female figure of Sikán. Her prints use this origin story of the Abakuá to make visible the emotions and struggles of Sikán and then combines these with her own ideas and experiences of life as a black Cuban woman. Her life mirrored that of Sikán, as both gained and shared secret knowledge thought to be for the sole possession of the patriarchy, and both died young having shared their knowledge. Ayón said of Sikán, “She is like me, and she lives through me in my restlessness, as I instinctively search for an escape” and, also, “Sikán is a transgressor, and as such I see her, and I see myself”.
Priscilla Frank summarises The key story well: “According to legend, it was Sikán who originally discovered the magic of Abakuá by accidentally trapping a fish who subsequently spoke to her in the mystical “voice” of Abakuá. Since women were banned from knowing the organisation’s deepest secrets, Sikán was sworn to secrecy. The princess, however, gave in to temptation and divulged her forbidden knowledge to her fiancée; her life was sacrificed as a result.” Frank notes, “Ayón injects the all-male narrative of the Abakuá with feminine presence in her prints, accomplishing in art what could never manifest in real life.” So, “In Abakuá lore, Sikán is killed for her transgressions”, but, in Ayón’s works, Sikán “is brought back to life, in part serving as a proxy for the artist herself,” who then, later, also dies herself. By telling these ancient stories in new ways, Ayón’s work creates space for imagining alternative possibilities for spirituality and gender equality.
The later prints produced by Ayón utilise stark and powerful contrasts through their use of blacks, whites and a range of subtle greys. These enable her to use bodies to create patterns (as well as covering bodies in patterns) as in the opening images of this show’ La Pesca (Fishing)’ and ‘Ya estamos aquí(We Are Already Here)’. Her figures possess no features, but their haunting eyes yet communicate forcefully through their stature and interconnectivity. These are dense, visually complex works that make thrillingly effective use of the signs and symbols – the anaforuanas or ‘signatures’ – of Abakuá.
However, the key to these works is the conflict and struggle between matriarchy and patriarchy, which is being worked out within them. ‘La Pesca I (Fishing I)’ is an early coloured print depicting women fishing in a river, as was their exclusive right at the time before patriarchal control was introduced. In’ La cena (The Supper)’, as Frank writes, Ayón “riffs off the familiar image of The Last Supper, with Sikán replacing Jesus at the centre of the table, and an assembly of lattice-laden shadow figures, also women, at her sides”. In ‘Resurrección (Resurrection), Sikán demonstrates her power by raising her white arms while a contrite man bows before her miraculous return. In these ways, as Frank suggests, “Together Sikán and Ayón challenged a realm of knowledge ordained solely for men, art serving as an alternative means of communication that rests on the power of the eyes, not the tongue.”
Yet, Ayón also shows us the brooding powerful figure of ‘Mokongo’ who has power conferred upon him by the Abakuáwhen he sacrifices Sikán and transforms her into the saviour mother, creating the patriarchal secret society. A part of his power, and that of the Abakuá, is to silence the voices of women, and this is why the figures in Ayón’s images have no features other than their eyes. She stated, “The secret was the voice … It was power”. Her response was to focus on eyes, as these “look at you very directly, so I don’t believe you can hide”. They make “you an accomplice in what you see”.
David Mateo, who knew Ayón, wrote: “When Belkis emphasises the Sikan conflict, she seems to want to emphasise her own conflict. The cause of one was unfolding more and more until it became the cause of the other. “This is the conflict at the heart of these works, and yet the body of work she has left behind transcends this internal conflict to create a radical new mythology capable of amending the past and altering the future.
‘Tender Grounds: Platform Graduate Award’, 2 November – 1 December 2024, and ‘Belkis Ayón: Sikán Illuminations’, 2 November 2024 – 9 February 2025, Modern Art Oxford
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Lead image: Belkis Ayon, La Cena (The Supper) 1991 © Belkis Ayong Estate. Courtesy of the Belkis Ayon Estate and David Castello. Photo: Jose Figueroa