{"id":4004,"date":"2014-07-22T20:09:46","date_gmt":"2014-07-22T20:09:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/laymert.com.br\/yanomami\/"},"modified":"2022-12-27T17:58:41","modified_gmt":"2022-12-27T20:58:41","slug":"yanomami","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/laymert.com.br\/en\/yanomami\/","title":{"rendered":"Projections of the Forest-Land: The Yanomami Image-Drawing"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/div>[vc_column_text]The Yanomami drawings are, literally, extraordinary. For aesthetic criteria, but also, and mainly, for their intriguing and mysterious character, when we stop to think about how and by whom they are made.<\/p>\n

The images that the reader-viewer can appreciate in the preceding and following pages constitute a small sampling from the collections of Carlo Zacquini and Claudia Andujar, two tireless defenders of the Yanomami territory and people, with whom they have maintained close ties for decades. It was Andujar who in the 1970s brought them paper and colored pens\u2014which they had never seen before\u2014and asked them to use these materials as a means of expressing their world and their understanding of the world. As a form of communication.[1]<\/sup><\/p>\n

[1]<\/sup> In 1978, Claudia Andujar, Carlo Zacquini, and Emilie Chamie published a very beautiful book of Yanomami drawings, entitled Mitopoemas Y\u00e3nomam, sponsored by Olivetti do Brasil.<\/p>\n

The Yanomami did not know about drawing, at least not as we understand it. Or to put it better, their culture considers forms of expression that involve the conception and execution of graphic signs, such as body painting and the ornamentation of baskets and other objects. But, according to anthropologist Bruce Albert\u2014who thoroughly knows the life and thought of the Yanomami people\u2014such graphic signs should be considered as traces or marks, not as images. Moreover, they are imprinted on bodies and objects\u2014therefore, on volumes\u2014rather than on two-dimensional surfaces like sheets of paper, which evidently changes everything. Thus, what we see here are drawings mad by people who do not \u201cknow\u201d how to draw, who never learned and were not used to seeing drawings. These are not part of their ontological or epistemological universe. And this is where the intriguing fascination arises. Because when we become aware of this, certain questions immediately emerge: how is it possible for the drawing to happen? And how can there be so much power of expression, such an intensity of the line, so much balance and movement, so much vibration? In short: how can nonartists be able to create something so splendid?[\/vc_column_text]

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<\/div>[vc_column_text]The criteria of the history of art to which we normally recur are inadequate to explain the quality of this production. And to say that these drawings are \u201cinspired\u201d does not help to explain it. Nevertheless, it is patently obvious that the Yanomami seem to have direct and spontaneous access to the extreme freedom of the line, the act of drawing sought by Mir\u00f3, or by Klee. From whence comes this grace? (There is no better term to describe what paradoxically drives the act of creation while seeming to result from it.)<\/p>\n

Convinced that the Yanomami are great (non)drawers, great (non)artists, I decided to put their creations to the test. I wanted to check whether the extremely high quality I saw in them was a subjective question, an overestimation, due to my involvement with the Indians.[2]<\/sup> I trusted the longstanding aesthetic impression that they had caused over the years and through my daily experience with the drawings\u2014but I wanted to compare it with that of a great artist, not committed with the Yanomami or the indigenous cause, that is to say, an unrelated reference point. This occasion arose in 2010, on the eve of the opening of the 29th Bienal de S\u00e3o Paulo.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/sup>\u00a0I have been in contact with the Yanomami since the 1990s, initially by way of the Comiss\u00e3o Pr\u00f3- Yanomami (CCPY), an NGO founded by Claudia Andujar, Carlo Zacquini, Bruce Albert, and Alcida Ramos, which fought for the demarcation of their land, and later for the defense of the territory and culture of the Yanomami people. More recently, from 2008 to 2010, Davi Kopenawa, the Yanomami shamans, and the Watoriki community participated in the realization of the multimedia opera Amazonas, presented at the Munich Biennale (In- ternational Festival for New Music Theatre) and at Sesc Pompeia, in S\u00e3o Paulo. In 2011 and 2012, on the initiative of Davi Kopenawa, two meetings of shamans were held, within the scope of the Dispositivos de Vis\u00e3o project carried out by the Laborat\u00f3rio de Cultura e Tecnologia em Rede, of the Instituto S\u00e9culo 21, which resulted in the film Xapiri, codirected by Leandro Lima, Gisela Motta, Stella Senra, Bruce Albert, and myself.<\/p>\n[\/vc_column_text]

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  1. Shaman Yanomami<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013\u00a0Xapuri \u00f1anomami<\/li>\n
  2. Dish<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Mahe a<\/li>\n
  3. Powder of the Kurare<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 \u00d1akona uxip<\/li>\n
  4. Path of the spirits of shamans<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Hekura xapuri\u00f1o<\/li>\n
  5. Tree of the Kurare<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 \u00d1akonahi<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n[\/vc_column_text]
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