CLAUDIA ANDUJAR, THE YANOMAMI STRUGGLE · combining Yanomami chants and experimental music...
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CLAUDIA ANDUJAR, THE YANOMAMI STRUGGLE January 30 – May 10, 2020 PRESS RELEASE EXHIBITION PRESS OFFICER Sophie Lawani-Wesley [email protected] Tel. +33 (0)1 42 18 56 65 PRESS MANAGER Matthieu Simonnet [email protected] Tel. +33 (0)1 42 18 56 77 The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain is pleased to announce the largest exhibition to date dedicated to the work and activism of Claudia Andujar. For over five decades, she has devoted her life to photographing and protecting the Yanomami, one of Brazil’s largest indigenous groups. The young Susi Korihana thëri swimming, infrared film, Catrimani, Roraima, 1972–74. © Claudia Andujar. I am connected to the indigenous, to the land, to the primary struggle. All of that moves me deeply. Everything seems essential. Perhaps I have always searched for the answer to the meaning of life in this essential core. I was driven there, to the Amazon jungle, for this reason. It was instinctive. I was looking to find myself. Claudia Andujar
Transcript of CLAUDIA ANDUJAR, THE YANOMAMI STRUGGLE · combining Yanomami chants and experimental music...
CLAUDIA ANDUJAR, THE YANOMAMI STRUGGLEJanuary 30 – May 10, 2020
PRESS RELEASE EXHIBITION
PRESS OFFICERSophie [email protected] Tel. +33 (0)1 42 18 56 65
PRESS MANAGERMatthieu [email protected]. +33 (0)1 42 18 56 77
The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain is pleased to announce the largest exhibition to date dedicated to the work and activism of Claudia Andujar. For over five decades, she has devoted her life to photographing and protecting the Yanomami, one of
Brazil’s largest indigenous groups.
The young Susi Korihana thëri swimming, infrared film, Catrimani, Roraima, 1972–74. © Claudia Andujar.
I am connected to the indigenous, to the land, to the primary struggle. All of that moves me deeply. Everything seems essential. Perhaps I have always searched for the answer to the meaning of life in this essential core. I was
driven there, to the Amazon jungle, for this reason. It was instinctive. I was looking to find myself.Claudia Andujar
Based on four years of research in the photographer’s archive, this new exhibition curated by Thyago Nogueira for the Instituto Moreira Salles in Brazil, will focus on her work from this period, bringing together over three hundred photographs, her audiovisual installation as well as a series of Yanomami drawings. The exhibition will explore Claudia Andujar’s extraordinary contribution to the art of photography as well as her major role as a human rights activist in the defense of the Yanomami. It is divided into two sections reflecting the dual nature of a career committed to both art and activism. The first sec-tion presents the photographs from her first seven years living with the Yanomami, showing how she grappled with the challenges of visually interpreting a complex culture. The second features the work she produced during her period of activism, when she began to use her photography as a tool among others for political change.
Claudia Andujar was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in 1931 and currently lives and works in São Paulo. She grew up in Transylvania, which at the time had recently been incorporated to Romania after years of Hungarian domination. During WWII, Claudia’s father, a Hungarian Jew, was deported to Dachau where he was killed along with most of her paternal relatives. Claudia Andujar fled with her mother to Switzlerand, immigrated first to the United States in 1946, then to Brazil in 1955 where she began a career as a photojournalist.
Interpreting Yanomami Culture
Claudia Andujar first met the Yanomami in 1971 while working on an article about the Amazon for Realidade magazine. Fascinated by the culture of this isolated community, she decided to embark on an in-depth photographic essay on their daily life after receiving a Guggenheim fellowship to support the proj-ect. From the very beginning, her approach differed greatly from the straightforward documentary style of her contemporaries. The photographs she made during this period show how she experimented with a variety of photographic techniques in an attempt to visually trans-late the shamanic culture of the Yanomami. Applying Vaseline to the lens of her camera, using flash devices, oil lamps, and infrared film, she created visual distortions, streaks of light, and saturated colors, imbuing her images with a feeling of the otherworldly.
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PRESS OFFICERSophie [email protected] Tel. +33 (0)1 42 18 56 65
PRESS MANAGERMatthieu [email protected]. +33 (0)1 42 18 56 77
Portrait of Claudia Andujar. © Victor Moriyama.
Marcados Serie, Aracá, Amazonas / Surucucus, Roraima, 1983. © Claudia Andujar.
Claudia Andujar also developed a series of sober black-and-white portraits that capture the grace and dignity of the Yanomami. Focusing closely on faces and body fragments, she tightly frames her images, using a dramatic chiaroscuro to create a feeling of intimacy and draw attention to individual psychological states.
Alongside the many photographs taken during this period, the exhibition will also present a selection of Yanomami drawings. After years photographing the Yanomami herself, Claudia Andujar felt it was important to provide them with the opportunity to represent their own conceptions of nature and the universe. She thus initiated a drawing project, equipping members of the community with markers and paper. A selection of these drawings representing Yanomami myths, rituals, and sha-manic visions will be presented in the exhibition.
Political Activism
By the late 1970s, Claudia Andujar had reached a turning point in her career. The construction of a transcontinental highway in the Amazon, initiated by Brazil’s military government, opened up the region to deforestation as well as invasive agricultural programs, bringing epidemics to the Yanomami and leading to the annihilation of entire communities. This situation reminded her of the genocide in Europe, and its impact on her was such that she decided to deepen her commitment to the Yanomami struggle. In 1978 she founded, with the missionary Carlo Zacquini and the anthropologist Bruce Albert, the Commissão Pro-Yanomani (CCPY) and began a fourteen-year-long campaign to designate their homeland. At this point in her career photography, she put her artistic project aside and used photography primarily as a means to raise awareness and support her cause.
In the early 1980s, Claudia Andujar took a series of black-and-white portraits of the Yanomami as part of
a vaccination campaign. They are wearing numbered labels to help identify them for their medical records. The artist was struck by how these labels recalled the numerical tattoos of those ‘branded for death’ during the Holocaust. She later revisited these portraits and created the Marcados series, which reveal the ambiguity inherent in this act of labelling even if it is ultimately for their survival. In the exhibition, we will present previously unseen photographs from this series.
One of the other major works presented in this section is Genocide of the Yanomami: Death of Brazil (1989/2018). This audiovisual installation, which has been recreated specifically for the exhibition, was originally made in reaction to the decrees signed in 1989, which broke up Yanomami territory in nineteen separate reservations. Produced with photos from Claudia Andujar’s archive, re-photographed using lights and filters, the projection leads the visitor from a world of harmony to one devastated by the progress of Western civilization. A soundtrack composed by Marlui Miranda combining Yanomami chants and experimental music accompanies this installation.
In 1992, following the campaign led by Claudia Andujar, Carlo Zacquini, Bruce Albert, and the Yanomami shaman and spokesman, Davi Kopenawa, the Brazilian government agreed to legally demarcate Yanomami territory. Recognized on the eve of the UN Conference on Environment and Development, this territory is still threatened by illegal mining and logging.
The work of Claudia Andujar provides both an unparalleled glimpse into the complex cosmological worldview of the Yanomami and a powerful political indictment of the violence perpetrated against them. The explosive force of her photography remains relevant today in view of the renewed threats facing the Yanomami and the Amazon basin.
PRESS RELEASE EXHIBITION
PRESS OFFICERSophie [email protected] Tel. +33 (0)1 42 18 56 65
PRESS MANAGERMatthieu [email protected]. +33 (0)1 42 18 56 77
Collective house near the Catholic mission on the Catrimani River, Roraima, infrared film, 1976. © Claudia Andujar.
Guest decorated with vulture and hawk plumage for a feast, photographed in multiple exposure, Catrimani, Roraima, 1974. © Claudia Andujar.
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The Fondation Cartier is pleased to announce the presence of Claudia Andujar, Davi Kopenawa, Bruce Albert, and Thyago Nogueira at the exhibition’s opening events. They will also participate in the Nuit Yanomami, which will be hosted by Cédric Villani.
The Fondation Cartier will present Claudia Andujar, The Yanomami Struggle at Triennale Milano, Italy, from Fall 2020 onwards, as part of the joint partnership between the two institutions. The exhibition will also travel to the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, from June 6, 2020, and to Foundation Mapfre, Madrid, Spain, from February 11, 2021.
The exhibition is supported by Instituto Socioambiental, Brazil and Hutukara Yanomami Association, Brazil.
Curator: Thyago Nogueira,assisted by Valentina TongExhibition coordinator:Leanne Sacramone,assisted by Juliette Lecorne
Exhibition catalogIn conjunction with the exhibition, the Fondation Cartier will publish the catalogue in French, English, and Ital-ian, presenting the artist’s photographs as well as excerpts from her notebooks and Yanomami drawings.With texts by Claudia Andujar, Thyago Nogueira, and Bruce Albert, it will feature a map of Yanomami territory as well as a timeline documenting the artist’s life and the history of the Yanomami people. The catalog is shortlisted as pho-tography catalog of the year for the Paris Photo-Aperture Prize.
Publication Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, ParisFrench, English, and Italian versions Softback, 23 × 31 cm, 336 pages 300 black-and-white and color reproductionsTexts by Claudia Andujar, Thyago Nogueira and Bruce AlbertISBN: 978-2-86925-154-0Price: €40Publication date: January 2020 Distribution: Thames & Hudson
Testimony from Davi Kopenawa,Shaman and spokesperson for the Yanomami,Co-foudner of the Hutukara Yanomami Association,Laureate of the Right Livelihood Award, Stockholm, 2019
“ Claudia Andujar came to Brazil, passed through São Paulo, then Brasília, then Boa Vista, and then to the Yanomami lands. She arrived at the Catrimani mission. She was thinking about her project, what she was going to do, what she was going to plant. The way one would plant a banana tree, the way one would plant a cashew tree. She wore the clothes of the Yano-mami, to make friends. She is not Yanomami, but she is a true friend. She took photographs of childbirth, of women, of child-ren. Then she taught me to fight, to defend our people, land, language, customs, festivals, dances, chants, and shamanism. She explained things to me like my own mother would. I did not know how to fight against politicians, against the napë pë [non-indigenous people]. It was good that she gave me the bow and arrow as a weapon, not for killing whites but for speaking in defense of the Yanomami people. It is very important for all of you to see the work she did. There are many photos of Yanomami who have already died but these photos are important for you to get to know and respect my people. Those who do not know the Yanomami will know them through these images. My people are in them. You have never visited them, but they are present here. It is important to me and to you, your sons and daughters, young adults, children to learn to see and respect my Yanomami people of Brazil who have lived in this land for many years.”
PRESS OFFICERSophie [email protected] Tel. +33 (0)1 42 18 56 65
PRESS MANAGERMatthieu [email protected]. +33 (0)1 42 18 56 77
Davi Kopenawa and Claudia Andujar, 2010 - Photo © Fiona Watson/Survival
