My life in two worlds
In the 1970s, Claudia Andujar took pictures of the city of São Paulo seen from above, as she had done with the lush nature of the Yanomamis’ lands. Using infrared film, she intervened with the city’s representation, bringing it closer to another famous work from her career, the “Maloca em chamas” (Burning Maloca) – from the Casa (Home, 1976) series, also featured in the exhibition.
For the Brazilian indigenous people, the burning of the maloca represents renewal through change. When the land off of which they’re living no longer bears fruit and the forest surrounding them offers no animals to hunt, they burn their houses to build new ones, elsewhere, thus making possible a new beginning.
The blueish-green dream
“Paxo+m+k+ is the blueish-green girl being exhibited. Calm, lying in her hammock, in the forest, close to the river, dreaming of the lush, green world, her own world, hearing the river rattling by, crossing the thousand-year-old density of the trees, silently admiring the intense blue color of the sky, filtered by the trees’ high canopies, listening as the birds sing. It’s the world in which all Yanomamis are born and raised, as well as Paxo+m+k+, belonging to the blueish-green universe“– Claudia Andujar
In 1974, Andujar worked on a series of portraits featuring a young Indian girl named PAXO+M+K+ using black-and-white film stock. These images are among the first Andujar has made in her visits to the Yanomamis’ lands. In 1982, she rephotographed the original using infrared film. From this process – a recurring one in her career -, Andujar seeks to infuse images with idyllic aspects, recovering part of her memories from these first meetings, setting them on a different world – pictorial, imaginary and subjective. According to Andujar, “I bring from memory the green of the vegetation and the blue of the sky, idyllic elements from Amazônia, and the colors infuse this work representing the Indians’ virtue in continuing to defend the preservation of the environment and their struggle to keep it healthy and free from meddling, either from illegal mining or the invasion of lands already defined as belonging to the Yanomamis.”
A sad ending
In 1990, Claudia Andujar was part of a large-scale event-exhibition at Memorial da América Latina, in São Paulo. Other than the 34 images and the texts showcased here, the event “O índio / Ontem, hoje e amanhã” (The Indian / Yesterday, today and tomorrow) featured a series of lectures and seminars with intellectuals and Indian leaders, meetings of documentary filmmakers, a video festival, and the collaboration of photographer Charles Vincent. The idea was to create a venue to showcase testimonies from the different realities seen in the American continent, as it was believed that such flexible scheduling would stimulate the audience to participate directly with the featured artists.
Texts written by anthropologist Alcida Ramos, testimony from hallmark figures such as Indian leader Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, and his companions João Davi Yanomami, Ivanildo Wawanaweytheri and Tuxaua Brito Yanomami, convey the anguish that the Yanomami people have been experiencing since then.
At that point, Claudia Andujar was completing 11 years of working with the Yanomamis, via CCPY (Comissão Pró Yanomami, Pro-Yanomami Commission), counting on support from government and non-government organizations from around the world. Since then, CCPY sought to bring information and awareness of the problem to the public opinion, as well as to put pressure on the Brazilian government to define the limits of the Yanomamis’ lands and enforce them. After 13 years of non-stop campaigning, started in 1978, the Terra Indígena Yanomami was officially defined between the states of Roraima and Amazonas in 1991, with its final issuing and registering in 1992.
The set of images selected by Andujar sought to portray the reality lived by the Yanomami populations suffering from a series of consequences stemming from the nearing Perimetral Norte highway, as well as from the growing presence of gold mining and wood cutting activity in the region. Diseases and the contamination of the Indians’ lands and rivers – and their very bodies – have left behind a path of destruction, physical as much as cultural, with results that are felt to this day.
Even with the borders of their lands already defined, the Terra Indígena Yanomami is constantly invaded, and also affected by mercury contamination from upstream mining operations. The poignancy of such matters turns this set of images into a comment on the urgency of the conditions denounced by Andujar’s lenses from 1970 to 1980, which are still present in our times. Illegal mining activities still occur and have in fact grown. According to Andujar, “a recent scientific study undertaken and published by Fiocruz along the Rio Aracaça shows that mercury contamination from upstream gold mining has affected 90% of the local population. One could call this a massacre. The Brazilian government is not enforcing the necessary action to put an end to the illegal land invasion. At this pace, the Yanomamis will meet a sad end and, in the words of Davi Kopenawa from his book, the world will be no more”.
My life in two worlds
In the 1970s, Claudia Andujar took pictures of the city of São Paulo seen from above, as she had done with the lush nature of the Yanomamis’ lands. Using infrared film, she intervened with the city’s representation, bringing it closer to another famous work from her career, the “Maloca em chamas” (Burning Maloca) – from the Casa (Home, 1976) series, also featured in the exhibition.
For the Brazilian indigenous people, the burning of the maloca represents renewal through change. When the land off of which they’re living no longer bears fruit and the forest surrounding them offers no animals to hunt, they burn their houses to build new ones, elsewhere, thus making possible a new beginning.
The blueish-green dream
“Paxo+m+k+ is the blueish-green girl being exhibited. Calm, lying in her hammock, in the forest, close to the river, dreaming of the lush, green world, her own world, hearing the river rattling by, crossing the thousand-year-old density of the trees, silently admiring the intense blue color of the sky, filtered by the trees’ high canopies, listening as the birds sing. It’s the world in which all Yanomamis are born and raised, as well as Paxo+m+k+, belonging to the blueish-green universe“– Claudia Andujar
In 1974, Andujar worked on a series of portraits featuring a young Indian girl named PAXO+M+K+ using black-and-white film stock. These images are among the first Andujar has made in her visits to the Yanomamis’ lands. In 1982, she rephotographed the original using infrared film. From this process – a recurring one in her career -, Andujar seeks to infuse images with idyllic aspects, recovering part of her memories from these first meetings, setting them on a different world – pictorial, imaginary and subjective. According to Andujar, “I bring from memory the green of the vegetation and the blue of the sky, idyllic elements from Amazônia, and the colors infuse this work representing the Indians’ virtue in continuing to defend the preservation of the environment and their struggle to keep it healthy and free from meddling, either from illegal mining or the invasion of lands already defined as belonging to the Yanomamis.”
A sad ending
In 1990, Claudia Andujar was part of a large-scale event-exhibition at Memorial da América Latina, in São Paulo. Other than the 34 images and the texts showcased here, the event “O índio / Ontem, hoje e amanhã” (The Indian / Yesterday, today and tomorrow) featured a series of lectures and seminars with intellectuals and Indian leaders, meetings of documentary filmmakers, a video festival, and the collaboration of photographer Charles Vincent. The idea was to create a venue to showcase testimonies from the different realities seen in the American continent, as it was believed that such flexible scheduling would stimulate the audience to participate directly with the featured artists.
Texts written by anthropologist Alcida Ramos, testimony from hallmark figures such as Indian leader Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, and his companions João Davi Yanomami, Ivanildo Wawanaweytheri and Tuxaua Brito Yanomami, convey the anguish that the Yanomami people have been experiencing since then.
At that point, Claudia Andujar was completing 11 years of working with the Yanomamis, via CCPY (Comissão Pró Yanomami, Pro-Yanomami Commission), counting on support from government and non-government organizations from around the world. Since then, CCPY sought to bring information and awareness of the problem to the public opinion, as well as to put pressure on the Brazilian government to define the limits of the Yanomamis’ lands and enforce them. After 13 years of non-stop campaigning, started in 1978, the Terra Indígena Yanomami was officially defined between the states of Roraima and Amazonas in 1991, with its final issuing and registering in 1992.
The set of images selected by Andujar sought to portray the reality lived by the Yanomami populations suffering from a series of consequences stemming from the nearing Perimetral Norte highway, as well as from the growing presence of gold mining and wood cutting activity in the region. Diseases and the contamination of the Indians’ lands and rivers – and their very bodies – have left behind a path of destruction, physical as much as cultural, with results that are felt to this day.
Even with the borders of their lands already defined, the Terra Indígena Yanomami is constantly invaded, and also affected by mercury contamination from upstream mining operations. The poignancy of such matters turns this set of images into a comment on the urgency of the conditions denounced by Andujar’s lenses from 1970 to 1980, which are still present in our times. Illegal mining activities still occur and have in fact grown. According to Andujar, “a recent scientific study undertaken and published by Fiocruz along the Rio Aracaça shows that mercury contamination from upstream gold mining has affected 90% of the local population. One could call this a massacre. The Brazilian government is not enforcing the necessary action to put an end to the illegal land invasion. At this pace, the Yanomamis will meet a sad end and, in the words of Davi Kopenawa from his book, the world will be no more”.
