The booth presents works from different decades from the production of artist and activist Claudia Andujar (1931). On show are portraits done by the artist during her first stays with the Yanomami people in the northern parts of Brazil, bordering Venezuela. The booth also shows a group of photographs from the Marcados series and a photograph using infrared film of a Yanomami construction for shelter; and, also in the presentation, two works from the series Sonhos Yanomami [Yanomami dreams] made in the early 2000s when Claudia began revisiting her earlier work, experimenting with filters and rephotographing her older negatives and slides.
Claudia’s first encounter with the Yanomami dates back to the early 1970s. In 1979 she had co-founded CCPY (Comissão pela Criação do Parque Yanomami) and in 1981, when these photos were taken, she had already established a relationship of trust with the Indians, especially Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, that called her mother of the Yanomami.
When Claudia went on her “road show” in the mid to late 1980s to call attention to the Yanomami situation and advocating for the urgency of demarcation of their land, she always brought Davi with her and sometimes also other Yanomami representatives. The Yanomami land was officially demarcated by the Brazilian government in 1992 thanks to CCPY and Claudia´s incessant activism.
One of Andujar's activities in the project was to document through records the health condition of the Yanomami communities. Unlike the white man, the Yanomami Indians do not have proper names. In order to identify them, the artist decided to give a number to each individual for their medical register. These portraits are from the early 1980s.
In 2006, for the 27th Bienal de São Paulo, curated by Lisette Lagnado, a second interpretation of the works appeared. Lagnado knew about the extensive archive of portraits of the Yanomami from Claudia´s involvement with the medical expeditions through Eduardo Brandão, co-founder and partner in Vermelho, Claudia´s only gallery to date. Together, they convinced Claudia of showing a selection of 97 portraits in the edition of the biennale which curatorial approach was Como viver juntos [How to live together]. This marked the first itineration of the portraits – straight black and white photography - that came to be the Marcados series.
Claudia ended up showing these portraits at the bienal de São Paulo not grouped in any way. As a result of the bienal showing where Claudia saw, for the first time, a large number of the portraits exhibited, she decided to group the works together according to the villages where the portraits where taken.
The first selection of these groupings was shown at Vermelho in 2009. A second, and larger, selection of these groups was shown at the Centro de Cultura Judaica, CCJ (Jewish Cultural Center) in São Paulo in 2011, a solo exhibition curated by Eduardo Brandão. The show was entitled Marcados para … [Marked for …].
