Centre Street Building, Level 2A
Encubrimiento (de la estatua de Cristóbal Colón en el Parque Colón de la Ciudad Colonial en Santo Domingo, República Dominicana), from The Cloaking Series by Joiri Minaya is on view in Latin American Art / Arte Latinoamericano.
Artist Joiri Minaya challenges the presence of colonial statues in urban spaces of the Caribbean and reveals how Indigenous and African peoples resisted European colonization by using natural resources. The work has two parts: first, a photograph of the statue of Christopher Columbus in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, which Minaya had wrapped in fabric printed with images of plants. These include botanicals used by Indigenous, African, and Afro-Caribbean residents in resisting European dominance.
Second is a background wallpaper panel in the same meticulously drawn botanical print on display behind the work in Latin American Art / Arte Latinoamericano. It features plants such as ceiba flowers, yucca roots, and others used to resist colonizers, including guayacán and tobacco, used for physical and spiritual protection and healing. Others are plants mentioned in colonial documents as weaponized by Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean resistors. They tipped their arrows with venom from the manchineel fruit or trapped Spaniards in small structures and burned ají (chilies) causing coughing and burning lungs.
Minaya’s work is contrasted with a zemí, a stone sculpture made by Indigenous Taíno people of the Dominican Republic that represented or contained the spirit of an ancestor or deity.