Orlando City Hall’s 2023 Hispanic Heritage Month exhibition used the domino as a recurring symbol of family, friendship and shared cultural tradition.
The display brought handmade domino-inspired artworks together with newspapers, national flags and a 24-karat-gold Fabergé domino set.
A familiar game entering civic exhibition space
Dominoes hold an important place across many Latin American communities.
The game is associated with domestic gatherings, public tables, intergenerational contact and the social rhythms of neighbourhood life.
By making the domino the exhibition’s visual centre, the organisers transformed an ordinary recreational object into a carrier of memory and identity.
The custom artworks varied in form, but the available source consisted mainly of photographic captions and did not identify individual artists or titles.
Objects, flags and newspapers building a wider context
Flags from Hispanic countries placed the works within a broad and diverse regional frame.
Historic and contemporary newspapers added another form of cultural record, while the gold domino set demonstrated how the familiar game could be translated into luxury craft.
The exhibition remained at Orlando City Hall from September to November 2023.
Its civic location connected cultural celebration with municipal public space.
The display did not attempt to define Hispanic identity through one nation or one artistic style.
Instead, it used a shared object to suggest connections across different histories.
The domino carried the strongest meaning because it existed beyond the gallery before entering it.
In Orlando’s Hispanic Heritage Month Art Exhibition, an object associated with ordinary play became a visual language for continuity, conversation and the communities built around a table.