This retrospective exhibition of Belkis Ayón (Havana, 1967-1999) was conceived in its first version in Havana in 2009 to commemorate ten years of her decease, and covered the creative career of the artist as of 1984, when she was studying in the San Alejandro Academy in Havana, to her last series Desasosiego (Restlessness), made between 1998 and 1999, year in which she took her own life. It was the first time that such a far-reaching exhibition on the artist was conceived, not only because of the quality and quantity of the works – all of them exceptional examples of her technical mastery in collography-; but because it avoided commonplaces when analyzing her work (those regarding the ethnical and religious origin of the Abakuá Secret Society on which the artist based her work) instead emphasizing the universal value of her creations. Likewise, it took a contemporary vision of her work which transcended local references and became inscribed within the best of the international post- modern art.

The show included representative examples from her learning years, as well as all the works of installations carried out by the artist as of 1991, made in multiple sections. It includes some of the matrixes and also videos with interviews and documents about her creative process. Belkis Ayón fused elements of the Abakuá Secret Society in Cuba with other from primitive Christianity and other multiple references to religions, historic periods and cultures. She used all the above to quote or as a symbolic excuse to build a universal discourse against marginality, frustration, fear, censorship, violence, impotence, and to search for freedom, topics which were extremely sensitive for the artist and for Cuba during the 1990s due to the profound economic and political crises resulting from the collapse of European socialism.