Piñatas: The High Art of Celebration at the Mingei

We are delighted to have our popular exhibit from 2021 become more expansive and travel to the Mingei Museum in San Diego!

Mingei International Museum, 1439 El Prado, San Diego CA 92102

This groundbreaking show includes more than 80 works made by Latinx artists and makers from across the U.S. Work by traditional piñateros will be featured alongside the creations of artists who reinvent and reinterpret the piñata to form a burgeoning, expressive medium.

This exhibition is guest curated by Emily Zaiden, Curator of the Craft in America Center, and is a reimagining of an exhibition featured at Craft in America in 2021. Zaiden shares, “The contemporary artists featured in this exhibition reconsider the techniques, materials, function, tradition and notion of the piñata, forming a new language of imagined possibilities”.

This exhibition explores how piñatas are designed, constructed and executed, along with the role they play in modern material culture and in artistic practices. Piñatas of all shapes and sizes will be on view reflecting culture, politics, identity and daily life. Made with humor, biting wit, skilled craftsmanship and innovation, this is a vital and constantly evolving field for artmaking.

The works in this show amplify the materiality and performative aspects of piñatas to address the displacement and mistreatment of Latinx communities across the U.S. For example, local bi-national San Diego/Tijuana artist Diana Benavidez’s series, Vehiculos Transfronterizos, is a group of remote control piñata cars created as a form of political resistance. Many of the artworks are not intended to be smashed, but rather, presented as ephemeral sculptures.

Image Gallery

View the objects in the exhibition below and click on each image for information.

Catalog of 2021 Exhibition:

Printed copies of this catalog are available on Blurb for $15.