Tesoros del arte taíno

Curator: Carlos Andújar Persinal

Exhibition and catalog coordinator: Joel Butler Fernández

Museographer: Leticia Moronta

Date: October 2017 – March 2018

Venue: Centro León

Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic.

Exhibition website

Exhibition Catalog

Towards the VII century, the aboriginal groups that inhabited the island arrived at such a level of development that it is possible to identify a concrete Taino culture, differentiated from the culture of the arahuacos that initially populated the island. This exhibition, Tesoros del Arte Taino [Treasures of Taino Art], responds to an interest in achieving an understanding of the ways of life, the social world and the symbolic dimension of the Taino cosmogony as a deeply structured whole.

The human-nature relationship, reflected in an effort for survival, the management of natural resources and the universal expressions of their culture, was an integral part of their existence. Their leisure and entertainment provided an escape from traditional tasks, such as agriculture and domestic life, which were accompanied by a rituality and spirituality that was very present in their daily lives and in their material representations.

Taíno art is present in the ways of life of these groups. The culture and all its manifestations are recorded as testimonies or living words in each utensil, and sacred or utilitarian objects.

Because of the weight of aesthetics in the life and the world views of the Tainos, their art becomes an explanatory language, in symbols and signs of life and death, of myths and beliefs, of the immediacy of the resources food, in the simplicity of everyday life, and in the vitality that each piece transmits as a trace of a splendid past, turning it into its own history and book of its most outstanding chronicles, strengthening its social memory and reproducing its fundamental cultural canons.

Their milestones, exploits, and hopes are part of their permanent relationship with all objects, no matter their use, they are able to socialize the collective sentiment, by handling socially defined aesthetic patterns that served as a guide to the artist, reflecting the group’s sentiment. These are the paths traveled in Tesoros del Arte Taino.

Carlos Andujar Persinal