TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes will open the second part of its 2026 exhibition programme on 3 October, with Mientras seamos salvajes, a major group exhibition exploring colonialism, identity and the ways in which ideas such as the “savage” and the “barbarian” have been constructed over time.
The exhibition will bring together work by more than 50 artists from different periods and places, using the Canary Islands as one of its starting points for examining the history of Atlantic colonisation and its continuing influence on how we understand territory, culture and identity.
📅 Date: 3 October 2026 to 14 January 2027
📍 Area: TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Santa Cruz de Tenerife
🕒 Time: Exhibition opening dates and museum hours apply
A look at the colonial ideas behind identity
Curated by Alejandro Castañeda, Néstor Delgado, Katya García-Antón, Roberto Gil, Onda Corta (Narelys Hernández and Joel Peláez) and Sergio Rubira, Mientras seamos salvajes looks at the way modern colonial thinking created categories used to classify people and societies.
The Canary Islands provide an interesting starting point.
The exhibition draws on the work of Canarian anthropologist Fernando Estévez, whose research examined how apparently established aspects of island identity were themselves constructed through cultural processes.
One example is the figure of the guanche, which was represented through ideas and systems similar to those European powers used when describing Indigenous peoples elsewhere.
Another is the mago, historically associated with agricultural workers in the Canary Islands. The figure was initially linked to the rural working class before eventually becoming part of the islands’ folkloric identity.
In other words, identity isn’t always as straightforward as it looks.
More than an exhibition about the past
The exhibition doesn’t attempt to provide a simple history of colonialism.
Instead, it brings together artworks, documents, images and objects from different periods to explore how these ideas have survived, changed and reappeared in different contexts.
It also considers the role played by anthropology, archaeology, museums and visual culture in producing knowledge and establishing systems of classification and representation.
The project looks beyond colonial narratives too, exploring the survival of memories, knowledge and cosmologies that continued despite colonial processes.
The result is an exhibition that asks how different ways of understanding and inhabiting the world might coexist without being forced into a single definition of identity.
Three more exhibitions complete the season
Mientras seamos salvajes is only the beginning of TEA’s autumn programme.
On the same day, 3 October, the museum will also open an exhibition dedicated to José Aguiar, marking 50 years since the artist’s death. The exhibition will run until 17 January 2027 and will examine his career, his relationship with regionalism and his position within the artistic and institutional structures of his time.
The programme will then continue with Pepa Izquierdo: La realidad parece que nos toca, opening on 6 November and running until 28 March 2027.
The retrospective, curated by Isabel Tejeda and Vanessa Rosa, covers more than five decades of work by the Tenerife-born artist, whose practice has centred largely on painting and drawing.
Then, on 4 December, TEA will launch the Bienal Contemporánea TEA 2026, which will explore relationships between art, territory and community through projects developed in collaboration with different people and spaces across the island.
That exhibition will remain on display until 28 February 2027.
A busy autumn for TEA
With four major projects opening between October and December, TEA is heading into a particularly busy second half of its 2026 exhibition programme.
And Mientras seamos salvajes looks set to be one of the more thought-provoking additions, particularly for anyone interested in the complicated relationship between the Canary Islands, colonial history and the way island identity has been constructed over the centuries.
📍 Location: TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Santa Cruz de Tenerife
📅 Exhibition: 3 October 2026 to 14 January 2027
🎨 Artists: More than 50 artists