São Paulo Museum of Art opens indigenous exhibitions

The São Paulo Museum of Art (Masp) has opened three new temporary exhibitions. All of them are focused on indigenous stories. The museum's programming throughout 2023 is based on this theme and it intends to present the diversity and complexity of these cultures, besides discussing the silence of the official history of art in relation to this artistic production.

"2023 is a year dedicated to indigenous peoples and indigenous arts [at Masp]. I particularly consider this a very big step towards the recognition of indigenous arts and knowledge, which have historically been excluded of museums, and today they are being invited to participate in these institutions, particularly at Masp," said Edson Kayapó, assistant curator of indigenous art at Masp, in an interview with Agência Brasil.

One of the exhibitions is Carmézia Emiliano: The Tree of Life. It displays paintings that portray the daily life of the Macuxi indigenous artist’s community. The second and largest exhibition is Mahku: Visions, with paintings, drawings, and sculptures produced by the Huni Kuin ethnic group. The third one includes short films produced by the Bepunu Mebengokré collective, which can be seen in the museum's video room.

"These exhibitions inaugurate the year of indigenous stories [at Masp]. They address different media, supports, and languages of this production, revealing the diversity of the indigenous culture, stories that Brazil failed to look at with consistency for a long time," said Amanda Carneiro, assistant curator. The exhibitions can be visited until June.

Carmézia Emiliano

Carmézia Emiliano: The Tree of Life, curated by Amanda Carneiro, displays 35 paintings on canvas produced by the artist, eight of which were painted especially for the exhibition. They reflect landscapes and the daily life of the artist's community, the Macuxi indigenous people located mainly in Maloca do Japó, Normandia, in the state of Roraima.

"The tree of life, also called wazaká, is a very significant theme in Carmézia's production. It is linked to Macunaíma, a well-known novel to us, that tells the story of a myth in which a leafy tree was cut down and had its trunk transformed into Mount Roraima. This has become the motto of the exhibition—the capacity for renewal and perpetuation of indigenous knowledge and experiences," the curator explained.

Bepunu Mebengokré Collective

The production of graphics in the rituals of body painting is portrayed in two short films presented in the video room at Masp. Produced by the Bepunu Mebengokré collective, the short films approach from the extraction of the pigments to the symbolic and ancestral meanings of these practices.

The first short film, Menire Djê: Graphics of Mebengokré-Kayapó Women (2019), narrates the production process of the jenipapo ink, showing from the harvest of this fruit to its mixture with ground charcoal to give the appropriate pigmentation and consistency.

The second short film, Mê'ok: Our Painting (2014), presents a series of interviews and videos with people who grew up with their mothers using jenipapo and urucum to paint their bodies.

Mahku Collective

The second basement of the museum houses the largest exhibition dedicated to the Mahku indigenous collective, a Huni Kuin ethnic group living in the state of Acre, on the border of Peru. "This is the first major individual retrospective of this group," said Guilherme Giufrida, one of the curators, in an interview with Agência Brasil.

The exhibition celebrates the group’s ten-year anniversary, which officially emerged in 2013, although it began its work much earlier, in the early 2000s, in the indigenous undergraduate courses at the Federal University of Acre. "At that time, through university workshops, many Huni Kuin people’s oral practices began to be translated into papers and drawings, as if they were musical scores," the curator explained.

The exhibition Mahku: Visions displays about 110 paintings, drawings, and sculptures, which express the translations of chants, myths, ancestral history, and visions of the group. "The raw material of Mahku's work is based on the visions that they experience and visualize in the ayahuasca rituals called nixi pae," Giufrida added.

Nixi pae is the sacred drink, which arises from the myth of the boa constrictor, an animal that is very present in the group's paintings and is considered to be the being of transformation. It narrates the encounter of Yube Inu, an indigenous man, with Yube Shanu, the boa constrictor woman.

Another highlight of this exhibition is a mural painted in vibrant colors on the sides of the museum's red ramp, which connects the first and second basements. "We had the idea to invite them to paint the ramp itself. It is a 200-square-meter mural painting, adding up all the faces of the ramp. The group came all the way from Acre to do this painting. It was a very hard job and I think it will have an impact on the visitor," the curator said.

The exhibition also presents some Huni Khuin chants, recorded and translated into Portuguese and English.