Sacred Visions: Pablo Amaringo and Belkis Ayon Manso

The complex and detailed works of the late Pablo Amaringo and Belkis Ayon Manso are extraordinarily beautiful and emotional. Their art work is deeply rooted in their own personal experiences in religious ceremonies, and virtually all of their work is inspired by their deep spirituality. Without their spirituality, there would be no need for them to create art. The two artists worked in different media: the shaman Amaringo worked his ayahuasca-induced visions into paintings, and the santera Ayon Manso portrayed scenes of Santeria ceremonies and the Abakua society through the lost technique of collography and in lithographic prints.

The stunning and seething images found in Amaringo's work are reminiscent of the nierikate yarn paintings of the Huichol shamans of Mexico, such as the works of Jose Benitez Sanchez. The influence of these shamanic artists' chosen spiritual sacraments, which were ayahuasca and peyote respectively, is very evident in the use of vibrant colors and highly fantastical images.

The environments of Ayon Manso's work, with their rich ebonies and stark ivories, is reminiscent of film stills from the 1964 movie Soy Cuba. Although her collographs are very dark and appear to be captured images from a secret Abakua ceremony, the film has several scenes where characters are praying to Santeria gods; in city scenes, the film features characters living in the same Havana where Ayon Manso was born and raised. Soy Cuba is quite different in theme than her work, as this film was made by Soviet filmmaker Mikhail Kalatozov, and it captures the essence of Cuba before Castro. This film has also been held in high esteem with such American film gods as Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, for its visionary film style. Also, to note, the famous pool party scene in Paul Thomas Anderson's 1997 movie Boogie Nights pays homage to the style in which a rooftop party scene was shot in Soy Cuba.

In many of their works, the artist is represented as an onlooker in their works, however Amaringo's hallucinatory environments are exceedingly colorful and vibrant, whereas Ayon Manso's scenes of secret ceremonies are swathed in a spectrum of grays and ebonies. Although much of their work is deeply personal, both artists' works have a similar dreamlike presence of the supremely powerful and sacred, that all viewers can relate to. There is much to be explored in the lithographic technique of callography that Ayon Manso specialized in as it is a dying technique, and the mestizo culture of Amaringo also should be respected and preserved as it too is slowly dying. Amaringo recently died in 2009 at 71 after a long battle with illness, but in 1999 Ayon Manso unfortunately ended her life at the age of 32.

--Pablo Amaringo:
http://www.ayahuascavisions.com/pablo-amaringo-paintings-1.html
http://www.scribd.com/doc/3716773/Ayahuasca-Visions-by-Shaman-Pablo-Amaringo


--Huichol art:
http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/190-mexico-s-huichol-resource-page-their-culture-symbolism-art 
--Huichol shamanism video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtC1hBexPAI 


--Belkis Ayon Manso, the first is a video of her process to make a collographic print:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAdGFCxiL9A 
http://strawberige.blogspot.com/2011/03/belkis-ayon-manso.html
http://www.csupomona.edu/~kellogg_gallery/critics/ayon.html
http://www.csupomona.edu/~kellogg_gallery/critics/ayon2.html


--Soy Cuba film scenes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvwLZOpxAFQ&feature=related 
*Rooftop party scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BhMGrdA2Ag&feature=related  
--Boogie Nights pool scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCrGpT84G9Y&feature=related