Claudia Andujar presents three series of work at Vermelho from the 3rd of May to the 4th of June, 2016:
My life in two worlds
In the 1970s, Claudia Andujar took pictures of the city of São Paulo seen from above, as she had done with the lush nature of the Yanomamis’ lands. Using infrared film, she intervened with the city’s representation, bringing it closer to another famous work from her career, the Maloca em chamas (Burning Maloca) – from the Casa (Home, 1976) series, also featured in the exhibition. For the Brazilian indigenous people, the burning of the maloca represents renewal through change. When the land off of which they’re living no longer bears fruit and the forest surrounding them offers no animals to hunt, they burn their houses to build new ones, elsewhere, thus making possible a new beginning.
The blueish-green dream
In 1974, Andujar worked on a series of portraits featuring a young Indian girl named PAXO+M+K+ using black-and-white film stock. These images are among the first Andujar has made in her visits to the Yanomamis’ lands. In 1982, she rephotographedthe original using infrared film. From this process – a recurring one in her career -, Andujar seeks to infuse images with idyllic aspects, recovering part of her memories from these first meetings, setting them on a different world – pictorial, imaginary and subjective. According to Andujar, “I bring from memory the green of the vegetation and the blue of the sky, idyllic elements from Amazônia, and the colors infuse this work representing the Indians’ virtue in continuing to defend the preservation of the environment and their struggle to keep it healthy and free from meddling, either from illegal mining or the invasion of lands already defined as belonging to the Yanomamis.”
A sad ending
In 1990, Claudia Andujar was part of a large-scale event-exhibition at Memorial da América Latina, in São Paulo. Other than the 34 images and the texts showcased here, the event “O índio / Ontem, hoje e amanhã” (The Indian / Yesterday, today and tomorrow) featured a series of lectures and seminars with intellectuals and Indian leaders, meetings of documentary filmmakers, a video festival, and the collaboration of photographer Charles Vincent. The idea was to create a venue to showcase testimonies from the different realities seen in the American continent, as it was believed that such flexible scheduling would stimulate the audience to participate directly with the featured artists. Texts written by anthropologist Alcida Ramos, testimony from hallmark figures such as Indian leader Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, and his companions João Davi Yanomami, Ivanildo Wawanaweytheri and Tuxaua Brito Yanomami, convey the anguish that the Yanomami people have been experiencing since then.
