zemi

A zemi is a sculpture containing a spirit, in the tradition of the Taínos, the Indigenous people of Puerto Rico.

At the ceremony on Monday, Sanakori Luis Ramos, the behike, or medicine man, for the Arayeke Yukayek people, invoked the ancestors using a zemi, a sculptural object housing the spirit.

Their ceremonies were supplanted by Christian worship, their zemi statues by crucifixes and saints.

A Taino leader would have perceived the presence of a zemi in the tree that was carved into this show’s most exquisite object: a ritual vessel in the form of a crouching, grimacing deity, standing a little over two feet tall and meant to hold a hallucinogenic powder known as cohoba.

Central to Taino metaphysics was “zemi,” a spiritual power that circulated from gods and ancestors into the natural environment: the sea, the forest, the stones.