Talk | Belkis Ayón: Nkame Mafimba

Visual artist, researcher, and professor since 2003 at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Miguel Hernández University of Elche, Alicante, Spain, where she teaches Graphic Reproduction Techniques. Specialized in sculpture and printmaking, she extended her studies in Greece (1997), Mexico (1998, 2000, and 2002), and Germany (2005), which significantly influenced her work and artistic practice. Deeply imbued with the spirit of their mythologies, traditions, and legends, she lives with them, making them her own and expressing herself through the characters and stories that populate her works. She has conducted creative workshops at significant institutions such as the Alicante Institute of Culture Juan Gil-Albert (2016) and the Venice Academy of Fine Arts (2022), focused on collography, a non-toxic
experimental technique, and the unique methods employed by Cuban artist Belkis Ayón.

Susana Guerrero has been represented by Gallery 532 Thomas Jaeckel in New York since 2016, with a presence in exhibitions and fairs in Miami, New York, and Madrid.

Director, Afro-Latin American Research Institute, Harvard University.

A historian of Latin America and the Caribbean who specializes in the study of comparative slavery and race relations, Professor de la Fuente’s works on race, slavery, law, art, and Atlantic history have been published in Spanish, English, Portuguese, Italian, German, and French. He is the author of Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana (Cambridge University Press, 2020, coauthored with Ariela J. Gross), Havana and the Atlantic in the Sixteenth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2008), and of A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba (University of North Carolina Press, 2001), published in Spanish as Una nación
para todos: raza, desigualdad y política en Cuba, 1900-2000 (Madrid: Editorial Colibrí, 2001), winner of the Southern Historical Association’s 2003 prize for “best book in Latin American history.” He is the coeditor, with George Reid Andrews, of Afro-Latin American Studies: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2018, available in Spanish and Portuguese) and of the “Afro-Latin America” book series, Cambridge University Press.

Professor de la Fuente is also the curator of three art exhibits dealing with issues of race and the author or editor of their corresponding volumes: Queloides: Race and Racism in Cuban Contemporary Art (Havana-Pittsburgh-New York City-Cambridge, Ma, 2010-12); Drapetomania: Grupo Antillano and the Art of Afro-Cuba (Santiago de Cuba-Havana-New York City-Cambridge, Ma-San Francisco-Philadelphia-Chicago, 2013-16) and Diago: The Pasts of this Afro-Cuban Present (Cambridge, Ma-Miami, ongoing).

Professor de la Fuente is the founding Director of the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard and the faculty Chair of the Cuba Studies Program, DRCLAS. He is also the Senior Editor of the journal Cuban Studies.

Art critic, editor, and cultural manager.

Between 2014 and 2023, she served as the Programming Director of Martí Theatre (Office of the City Historian), an emblematic cultural space in Havana.

Editor and editorial coordinator of Nkame Mafimba (Turner Editions, Madrid, 2024), the second expanded edition of the catalogue raisonné of Cuban artist Belkis Ayón. Since 2018, she has closely collaborated with Belkis Ayón Estate on numerous projects and exhibitions and also serves as the Social Media Editor of the Estate. She has published essays, articles, and interviews on visual and performing arts in publications and websites such as Magazine AM: PM, ArteCubano, CubanArtNews and Cubaescena.

Sandra García Herrera (Havana, 1988) is the curator of the Fundación Los Carbonell Art Collection, Panama, and has been associated with Estate Belkis Ayón projects for over a decade. She directed Galeria Galiano, Havana, for seven years, where she organized over 40 exhibitions. In Cuba and internationally, she has promoted emerging Cuban art by coordinating a series of events such as Post-It and recently malaYerba, Competition for Young Artists. García Herrera graduated with a degree in Art History from the Universidad de La Habana in 2012.