The Tenerife Island Council’s Autonomous Organisation of Museums and Centres (OAMC) inaugurated the EurÁfriCaribe 2023 exhibition last Friday at the Museum of History and Anthropology (MHAT) at the “Casa Lercaro” in La Laguna. This collective art exhibition, organised by Centre Euro Africa and open until 26 March, illustrates the links created between Africa, Europe and the Caribbean as a result of human migrations.
The island’s Councillor for Museums, Concepción Rivero; the ambassador of the Dominican Republic, Juan Bolívar Díaz; the president of the Centre Euro Africa, Divaika Kiemba, and the curator of the exhibition project, Santa Morel, explained its characteristics. Rivero said that “the exhibition, which is free of charge, is a great opportunity for visitors to the museum to get to know the ins and outs of interculturality”. He also valued “the diversity of the exhibition, as it includes works from different artistic disciplines, such as photography, painting and sculpture”, and stressed that “they all revolve around the same theme: the tricontinental identity, which makes the African contributions to other societies visible”.
AFRO-DESCENDANTS
The exhibition is part of the programme of the third edition of Afro-descendants in Europe, an international artistic forum that this year pays tribute to the Dominican Republic. The Dominican ambassador explained that today’s society has “multiple voices in the same globalised world”, and initiatives such as EurÁfriCaribe 2023 “are the ones that make them heard”. Juan Bolívar Díaz explained that “Dominicans are 49% of African descent and 39% of European descent, which links them directly to both continents”.
Divaika Kiemba emphasised that the aim of his organisation is to “build bridges between Africa, Europe and Central America”, which is why Tenerife represents a strategic point in which to disseminate this exhibition, as it is located between the three continents. In addition, the president of the Centre Euro Africa pointed out that “this is the third edition of an initiative that encompasses different cultural activities, such as music, cinema and conferences: “We hope that each year it will continue to grow a little more thanks to the support of the institutions”.
This exhibition,” said its curator, Santa Morel, “is the fruit of almost two years of research and investigation, but also of dreams, because the emotional part is very important and from the beginning we knew that we could unite these three continents that have so much in common”. The exhibition, he explained, “is not only about being of African descent physically, we can also be so inside, like some of the artists participating in this event, and that is enough for us to transmit the ties that unite these continents”.
THE CREATORS
Noemí Terrero, Jordi Santacana, Laura Balde, Jean François Granjon and Dahiana Blanco are the artists who bring their work to life in this exhibition. After its stopover in Tenerife, the project will continue its route through the Peninsula, France, Morocco and Ivory Coast, ending in the Dominican Republic in 2024.
