Identidades in English No 4, December 2014 | Page 86

Fig. 8c.Belkis Ayón. 1993.
“La sentencia”. [The Sentence]
Engraving. Collography
Belkis Ayón takes the Abakuá secret society, or
and polemic ouevre on the production-reproducthe ñáñigos, as the point of departure for her plastion conflict regarding an entire past based on
tic work, along with the body of myths pertaining
myths, evocative fantasies, archetypes and transto that religious system and behavioral models
formational rites involving the ancestral figure of
shaped primordially by an exclusively male sexwomen.
uality.
She questions the taboos and clichés that weave
Magdalena Campos viscerally defends the contrithe popular notions and beliefs governing the rebution of a feminine perspective, evocative of
ligious practices of Regla de Ocha and Palo
terms like ‘trade,’ ‘traffic,’ ‘trap’ and ‘transculMonte. She does this by using dramatic and agturation.’ In fact, it alludes to all ills suffered by
gressive scenes to extrapolate a primitive and authe black race upon arriving in the New World;
thentic ritual—from metaphors or allegories—to
she addresses those who have been traditionally
reveal Africanness as a legacy, in its culturally exrelegated. Marta María Pérez revels a conceptual
pressive forms. It is another way of dealing with

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