Central American art in context: an origin story of the Bribri people


“In the Denver Art Museum’s Art of the Ancient Americas galleries, we worked with Mexico City-based animators Hola Combo to create animations to help tell the origin stories that explain the relationship between ancient American communities and the their environment. The animation for the Central America section was inspired by a song sung by the Bribri people of Costa Rica and northern Panama. It tells of the formation of the first humans and how they learned to build a relationship with the earth, and with each other that sustains them. The Bribri still sing this song today, and we are grateful to the work of anthropologist Cervantes Gamboa.”

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Listen in Bribri

Cite this page as: Denver Art Museum, "Central American art in context: an origin story of the Bribri people," in Smarthistory, April 7, 2022, accessed March 19, 2024, https://smarthistory.org/central-american-art-in-context-an-origin-story-bribri/.