The History of Matanceridad at the Festival of Origins

The recently concluded Festival of Origins, with its setting in Matanzas, incorporated into its program exhibitions that honor our traditions on the occasion of this festivity.

The displays «Origen de la matanceridad. Su presencia en el Museo Provincial Palacio de Junco» (Origin of Matanceridad. Its Presence in the Palacio de Junco Provincial Museum), inaugurated at the center from which it takes its name, and «Orígenes» (Origins), at the Art Museum, safeguard our city’s culture.

The first constitutes a journey through the different roots that make up our Yumurino identity, revealing how the city has been nourished by both local and foreign influences.

The migratory processes, according to the director of the cultural house, Olga Lidia González Monguía, were essential for the birth of a Matanceridad with nuances of European, Asian, and African currents.

The different pieces that complete the display inspire resistance and a necessary mestizaje in which objects from distant nations enhance Cuban identity.

«Orígenes,» for its part, also brings us closer to sister ethnic groups and regions that contributed cultural and linguistic diversity to our small Island.

It is part of the Traditional African Art Collection of the Lorenzo Padilla Art Museum of Matanzas, considered the only piece of its kind in the country.

It has 557 works where 20 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa and more than 130 different communities are represented.

The artistic production of this Central African zone as well as the rest of the continent transmitted to future generations the life essence of its peoples and the strength of their divinities.

A legacy that Yamila Gordillo, with the assistance of Daniela Daniel, both in charge of the curatorship of this material, consider essential to define the magical-religious universe that has also accompanied our Latin American and Caribbean communities.

This transitory exhibition consists of 25 pieces that reaffirm the mission of the traditional art of this continent from imaginaries that originated a new identity structuring.

The display presents symbologies of their respective countries such as masks and musical instruments created with materials such as wood, clay, and textile, as well as venerated figures such as the elder.

As a collateral initiative, another 10 works were shown to the public — eight paintings and two independent photographs by Cuban artists who have addressed themes associated with said phenomenon.