Claudia Andujar
Claudia Andujar with artists at the Claudia Andujar Maxita Yano Gallery

For indigenous peoples, kin is the expression they use to designate other members of their original communities, regardless of their territorial and ethnic location. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that the gallery at the Inhotim Institute dedicated to Claudia Andujar, considered the mother of the Yanomami people, as Davi Kopenawa says, will now host 22 indigenous artists from South America, including people from Bolivia, Colombia, Paraguay and Peru.

Andujar has a very unique career, combining refined and experimental aesthetic expression with radical political engagement. Her photographs of the Yanomami people, taken since 1971, express both a paradisiacal vision, when contact with white people was still practically non-existent, and the genocides caused by the construction of roads, the invasion of gold miners and the extraction of timber. 

In 1989, the Yanomami genocide was already denounced by Andujar in an exhibition at the São Paulo Museum of Art (Masp), a situation that continues to occur. In 2020 alone, according to a text by Dario Vitório Kopenawa Yanomami in the pavilion, 20 thousand miners invaded their lands and 570 children of their people died.

View of the gallery with portraits of Cláudia Andujar and Paulo Desana. Photo: Fabio Cypriano

“I did what I could,” Andujar whispered to me at the age of 94, present at the reopening of her gallery, like the sigh of someone who would like to do more. Her pavilion at Inhotim was inaugurated ten years ago, with 426 photographs, quickly becoming a global reference for the work of the artist, born in Switzerland and naturalized Brazilian since 1976. She arrived here in 1955, so 70 years ago.

“Our work was to contextualize and enhance the work of Claudia Andujar,” explains Beatriz Lemos, curator of the exhibition and of Inhotim. When it opened 10 years ago, the gallery was defined as permanent, following the examples of others there, such as those dedicated to Miguel Rio Branco, Adriana Varejão and Tunga. 

However, for Julia Rebouças, artistic director of Inhotim, the reformulation of the Andujar gallery represents a new moment in the largest open-air museum in Latin America. “It is impossible to imagine continuing to expand and not taking sustainability into account. That is why we need to rethink the galleries themselves,” says the director. For her, the new configuration also highlights how “culture can no longer be considered without the inclusion of self-represented indigenous production.”

Claudia Andujar

The beginning of this new policy with Andujar could not have been more appropriate. While the gallery, which was inaugurated under the curatorship of Rodrigo Moura, was already impressive, both for its architecture and its exquisite selection, the presence of a new generation of indigenous artists updates the struggle of the native peoples aesthetically and politically. With this, the space is now called Galeria Claudia Andujar Maxita Yano, which in the Yanomami language means Earth House.

The curatorship followed the original sequence and expography of the space, which had aerial photos and plant life of the Yanomami territory in the first room, followed by its population portrayed in harmony with the forest until the invasions and forms of struggle and resistance, which culminated in the demarcation of the territory in 1992, totaling an area similar to twice the size of Belgium. Andujar even produced a new series commissioned for the site, of an assembly of indigenous peoples in 2014, with color photos. 

In the new layout, each room features artists who interact with Andujar’s work. As a result, the gallery now houses around 300 works: 200 by Andujar herself and another 100 by other artists. An important concern was to maintain the aesthetic quality of the images. “We printed the photographs here in Belo Horizonte, in the best studio, to ensure the quality of the work,” says Beatriz Lemos. The works by indigenous artists are given a grayish background so that they are more easily identifiable.

The works by indigenous artists were not purchased by Inhotim; they are in the gallery on loan – the exhibition is expected to last at least three years. However, it is important to note that five works, involving six artists, were commissioned for the exhibition, indicating support for funding: financing new works by artists should be a central mission of any institution in the area. Among them is the large-scale panel by Olinda Silvana, an artist from the Shipibo-Konibo people of Peru.

In this new configuration, there are three axes that mark the gallery: the indigenous struggle and activism; the networks of allies and their community achievements; and a debate closer to the history of art that concerns representation, image and indigenous identity.

This last axis includes some of Andujar’s previously unseen portraits in the pavilion – Inhotim has around 500 of her photographs in its collection, so 100 had not yet been exhibited – in dialogue with Paulo Desana, one of the artists whose works were commissioned. In “The Spirits of the Forest”, he starts by recovering community memories of body painting from two villages located in Brumadinho, the city where Inhotim is located. Here, we see a legitimate concern on the part of the curators, with the assistance of Varusa, to get closer to the territory where Inhotim itself is located and where indigenous communities live. Desana made the records using fluorescent paints and black light, which gives the set a lysergic character to the portraits.

Another dialogue is in the first room, which features a series by UÝRA, an artist from Manaus, in the Amazon, with a series of photographs where she uses her body as a support to mimic nature, putting into practice what Davi Kopenawa states when he says that “I am a forest”. 

View of self-portraits by Amazonian artist UÝRA. Photo: Fabio Cypriano

The gallery also houses a documentary room, which tells the story of Andujar's involvement, from when she had her first meeting with the Yanomami, in 1971, for the magazine Realidade, to her work in health assistance for vaccination, which resulted in her Marcados series, through to the creation of the Commission for the Creation of the Yanomami Park (CCPY), in 1978, which achieved demarcation in 1992.

In total, he has dedicated more than 50 years to the Yanomami people, ranging from reporting to important international organizations, such as the UN, to participating in exhibitions in the most important museums. His series Marcados, for example, was recently acquired by MoMA in New York. Every photograph taken in this context is sold with 33% of the proceeds going to them, through the Hutukara Yanomami Association, which also has a room in the pavilion with drawings and videos by artists from the territory. “I did what I could” reflects a humble statement that contrasts with the greatness of his commitment and his work, now housed in the Casa de Terra.


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