Vania Leal
Vânia Leal - Photo: Nailana Thiely

Vânia Leal, curator of the First Amazon Biennial, oversees this year's traveling exhibitions, which involve visits from various parts of the institution to partner venues. For approximately two years, the Biennial will occupy the Amazon rivers, sparking debate and bringing territories closer together.

The traveling project arose from the need to bring the collection of Brazilian and international Amazonian works to artists and audiences in different cities across the region. With this, the project began its journey, which has already passed through Marabá (PA), Manaus (AM), Macapá (AP), Boa Vista (RO), São Luís (MA), and Canaã dos
Carajás (PA). These journeys are faced with difficulties and challenges. For Macapá, for example, accessible only by boat and plane, the works traveled by ferry.

Currently, Vânia Leal is the director of special projects at the Amazon Biennial Cultural Center in Belém, Pará, and has been monitoring the shifts that the first edition continues to generate. The next edition of the Biennial will take place in August 2025.

For arte!brasileiros, Vânia commented on part of the experience of this itinerary.

Read on.

By Vânia Leal

Starting the journey of itinerancy through the Brazilian Amazon put my body as a curator on journeys along roads, fields, rivers and forests, using various means of transport: plane, car and boat.

In every state, we connected with rivers as a source of inspiration and desire for water, in a process of hydrosolidarity, an encounter with ancestral cultures, different time zones, and Amazonian times that align our spirituality with the collective.

Pâmela Carneiro, the tour's producer, and I shared unique experiences throughout this journey. Encountering the Rio Negro in Manaus and the Marabá River, formed by the confluence of the Tocantins and Itacaínas rivers, underscored the importance of these geographic landmarks. We also explored rivers in Maranhão, such as the Periá, Mapari, and Anajatuba, the Branco River in Boa Vista, Rio Grande do Norte, and the majestic Amazon River in Macapá, Amapá. All of these experiences were marked by profound respect and rituals of permission and prayer before entering and immersing ourselves in the waters.

"Corpo de rio" (River Body) defines me from a political, cultural, anthropological, and human perspective, in the most intrinsic nature of existence. Being from the North and part of the forest places me in a position to experience the place in a profound way that enhances curatorial work.

In São Luís, Maranhão, dancing the Moon Drum with the entity Nãna Sá was a gift the world gave me. Nãna made me a skirt during the time of the sun: the skirt was hung on a clothesline, completing the cycles of the sun so that I would be allowed to wear it and, thus, dance in the streets of São Luís.

Watching and witnessing the firing and production of Daya Roraima's ceramics, part of the "Koko'Non" (grandmother clay in Macuxi) tradition, was a magical moment in the forest. Around a bonfire, I danced the Parixara for the fire, surrounded by earth and water, where the clay rests through a sacred technique. Removing the clay from the banks of the streams is a ritual. I experienced joyful spirits with Daya, from the creation to the inauguration of the work in Roraima's Civic Square, Macunaimî land, who taught me to fully feel the power of the Pajé Jenipapo, whose healing and blessing symbols Bruna Macuxi engraved on my "river body."

In Manaus, the power of the enchantment conducted by the shaman and indigenous activist Dyakaripó with herbs, tar, and prayers reaffirmed the strength of the native peoples. Manaus, an indigenous land nestled in the forest, amplifies multiple voices of knowledge and sharing.

In Macapá, the capital city located on the equator, which divides the hemispheres, we found a symbol of the diversity and resilience of a Black Amazon. The ancestry of Elisia Congó's barracão, where Marabaixo represents strength, faith, and Afro-Amapá identity, left its mark on us. The drums of Amapá opened our exhibition, like people honoring their Black roots.

The Amazon Biennial invests in a public and affirmative policy that safeguards the ancestral knowledge of Brazilian states. Its itinerancy is a communion with the mother cultures that reinforce the vibrant and resilient development of the Amazon.
I, as a wanderer on this journey, carry our stories of those who were born on the banks of the Amazon River and live on the banks of the Amazon rivers in a forest communion.


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