Sonhos Yanomami (2002) was one of the last works accomplished by Claudia Andujar from her archive of images of the Yanomami people. Playful, poetic and revealing, the series consists of 20 images created through overlaying of slides and negatives photographed starting 1971 when Andujar experienced her first contact with the indigenous people of Roraima.
As all relationships are transformative, Andujar’s encounter with the Yanomami transformed their lives permanently.
In the trajectory of Andujar, Sonhos Yanomami reflects the moment of a certain relief, of a certain rest that was only possible after the artist and her peers won the battle waged against the Brazilian federal government culminating in the demarcation of the Yanomami Indigenous Lands (TIY – Terra Indígena Yanomami) in 1992.
At last, a possible world for the Yanomami culture would be guaranteed by the right to land recognized by law. Sweet illusion. Today we know that the lives of the remaining native peoples of Brazil will never be assured as long as illegal speculation in their territories continues.
The cosmology that appears in Andujar’s Sonhos (Dreams) was only possible after almost 30 years of living together. The series is the result of the internalization of the relationship between the foreigner, as she was called during their first encounters, and the people who today call her napa (mother).
Previous experiments, as in the beautiful black and white images with diffuse and purposely blurred edges, already pointed to the artist’s quest to evade the field of simply representing this people’s way of life. But it was in Sonhos that the work seems to have reached completion.
Moving from a possible world to another possible world, the concept embedded in the series reveals images of thought that are distinct from cognition. They are individual or collective representations that, superimposed on images of nature, express states of beings of Yanomami cosmology.
If there is anything that should be said about Andujar’s work, it is certainly not the talk incorporated by the artist of explaining the Yanomami dream world, but that of multiplying our world. As the artist says, I don’t have time to photograph anymore. In fact, I do much more than that, photography is a minimal thing.
The installation Genocídio do Yanomami: morte do Brasil was originally presented in April 1989, at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo [MASP]. The purpose of the show was to honor Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, who in 1988 received the UN Global 500 Award, in addition to raising public awareness about the situation faced by the Yanomami people, who at the time suffered from diseases caused by contact with illegal miners.
Genocídio do Yanomami: morte do Brasil that we see now is composed of 228 images reshot and grouped by the artist herself. The evanescent images from the first version that used slide projectors and mirrors, or the recent montage of the installation that is part of the exhibition A Luta Yanomami , which used video projectors and digital images, return to their original format printed on paper. Each group of 20 images is accompanied by a sheet of slides re-photographed by Andujar. This procedure, used extensively by the artist, has the power to recontextualize images made in the early 1970s. Through practices like this, Andujar adds urgency to already known images, resignifying their content according to the sphere in which they are inserted.
Coincidence or simple repetition of patterns, a little more than 30 years after the first public presentation of the installation, the original people find themselves living under what might be an even worse situation. Today, in addition to the estimated more than 20,000 illegal miners installed on Yanomami land and a virus that travels through the air, indigenous peoples are affected by governmental necropolitics which has horizontalized the genocide. The humanitarian values, characteristic of the social welfare state implemented in the 20th century, are evanescing. The prevailing feeling is that we are no longer able to imagine a future because the powers that be are preventing its appearance, annihilating beliefs and dreams. Acting on the living, analogical body, the necropolitics discards the possibility of a future and establishes dystopia as the present in a time when there is no time.
In Brazil, genocide is synonymous with governmental project.
Marcos Gallon, 2021
Sonhos Yanomami (2002) was one of the last works accomplished by Claudia Andujar from her archive of images of the Yanomami people. Playful, poetic and revealing, the series consists of 20 images created through overlaying of slides and negatives photographed starting 1971 when Andujar experienced her first contact with the indigenous people of Roraima.
As all relationships are transformative, Andujar’s encounter with the Yanomami transformed their lives permanently.
In the trajectory of Andujar, Sonhos Yanomami reflects the moment of a certain relief, of a certain rest that was only possible after the artist and her peers won the battle waged against the Brazilian federal government culminating in the demarcation of the Yanomami Indigenous Lands (TIY – Terra Indígena Yanomami) in 1992.
At last, a possible world for the Yanomami culture would be guaranteed by the right to land recognized by law. Sweet illusion. Today we know that the lives of the remaining native peoples of Brazil will never be assured as long as illegal speculation in their territories continues.
The cosmology that appears in Andujar’s Sonhos (Dreams) was only possible after almost 30 years of living together. The series is the result of the internalization of the relationship between the foreigner, as she was called during their first encounters, and the people who today call her napa (mother).
Previous experiments, as in the beautiful black and white images with diffuse and purposely blurred edges, already pointed to the artist’s quest to evade the field of simply representing this people’s way of life. But it was in Sonhos that the work seems to have reached completion.
Moving from a possible world to another possible world, the concept embedded in the series reveals images of thought that are distinct from cognition. They are individual or collective representations that, superimposed on images of nature, express states of beings of Yanomami cosmology.
If there is anything that should be said about Andujar’s work, it is certainly not the talk incorporated by the artist of explaining the Yanomami dream world, but that of multiplying our world. As the artist says, I don’t have time to photograph anymore. In fact, I do much more than that, photography is a minimal thing.
The installation Genocídio do Yanomami: morte do Brasil was originally presented in April 1989, at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo [MASP]. The purpose of the show was to honor Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, who in 1988 received the UN Global 500 Award, in addition to raising public awareness about the situation faced by the Yanomami people, who at the time suffered from diseases caused by contact with illegal miners.
Genocídio do Yanomami: morte do Brasil that we see now is composed of 228 images reshot and grouped by the artist herself. The evanescent images from the first version that used slide projectors and mirrors, or the recent montage of the installation that is part of the exhibition A Luta Yanomami , which used video projectors and digital images, return to their original format printed on paper. Each group of 20 images is accompanied by a sheet of slides re-photographed by Andujar. This procedure, used extensively by the artist, has the power to recontextualize images made in the early 1970s. Through practices like this, Andujar adds urgency to already known images, resignifying their content according to the sphere in which they are inserted.
Coincidence or simple repetition of patterns, a little more than 30 years after the first public presentation of the installation, the original people find themselves living under what might be an even worse situation. Today, in addition to the estimated more than 20,000 illegal miners installed on Yanomami land and a virus that travels through the air, indigenous peoples are affected by governmental necropolitics which has horizontalized the genocide. The humanitarian values, characteristic of the social welfare state implemented in the 20th century, are evanescing. The prevailing feeling is that we are no longer able to imagine a future because the powers that be are preventing its appearance, annihilating beliefs and dreams. Acting on the living, analogical body, the necropolitics discards the possibility of a future and establishes dystopia as the present in a time when there is no time.
In Brazil, genocide is synonymous with governmental project.
Marcos Gallon, 2021