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Remedy

Curated by Joel Rosario Tapia

My Taino Spirituality and culture are the guiding principles which inform my artistic cultural and curatorial practice. In my culture, The Four Directions North East West and South are the four spiritual directions Rakuno, Sobaiko, Koromo, and Achiano representing knowledge, wisdom and enlightenment, introspection, Innocence /open mindedness respectively. This is our Medicine wheel. Our spiritual guidance system It is our Ancestral technology. It gives us our cosmic identity. Understanding these values gives us a guidance system to help navigate society.

 

Remedy 1. A medicine or treatment for a disease or injury. To set right an undesirable situation.

 

Remedy is a verb. An action taking action. A response to the White supremacist culture and values that superficially categorize, dismiss and narrowly define what America is. The climate is changing both socially and politically. The American experience and reality are changing relationally and economically. The time is ripe for discourse, the moment should be seized for the dialog that is inevitable and necessary and healthy. The moment is ripe for truth and reconciliation. Our discourse requires Honesty the kind of Honesty that lies beyond polarization. The Remedy is Truth.

 

The work of providing truth is being done. Remedy seeks to shine a light on the artist and practitioners doing the work of self-identifying and walking in their truths representing the kinds of change and perspectives which are alive and active in the Providence community and can be meaningful nationally and globally.

 

Remedy seeks to Commemorate the truth and realities of those artists work featured in the Exhibition.

 

Joel Rosario Tapia

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About the Curator

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Joel Rosario Tapia is known as TAPIA, Tureygua Taíno Cay and Chief Tureygua. He is an aboriginal urban artist of what is currently referred to as Puerto Rican descent, and a cultural practitioner of Boricua.

 

Tapia was born in Providence and served two tours of combat in Iraq with the US Army. He is the Superior, the Chief of the Cibuco-Bayamon Taíno Tribe, and an active voice and writer in the Indigenous Rights and Taíno diaspora. His work is influenced by indigenous Taíno Culture and hip-hop. He is a multi-hyphenate and creative director, and was the 2021 RISCA Folk Arts Fellow.

 

Tapia practices independently, and is the professional project manager of Caona Contractors LLC. He curates urban and indigenous BIPOC centered shows from his private gallery studio, “Da Art Dealers” in Providence. He also administers yearly Areito (indigenous Caribbean celebrations). Tapia is an author of two books on his artistic body of work, Ab-Origin and Kiss The Girls and is a co-author of the Implications & Ramifications of the Artificial Black Identity: Including a Legal Chronology of the Americas 1492 to 1968, Editions I and II, 2019/2021. Tapia is a member of Providence's Racial and Environmental Justice Committee.

 

> read about Tapia in PVD Arts & Letters

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Photo credit: Kris Craig

Meet The Artists

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