“Brazil’s defender of the Indigenous brings their fight to the Shed: Claudia Andujar has photographed the Yanomami in the Amazon during a lifetime of activism. At 91, she is still helping protect their rainforest homeland.”
—The New York Times
It’s a powerful new exhibition organized by Fondation Cartier on the Art and Activism of the Amazon’s indigenous Yanomami people. “The Yanomami Struggle,” which opened last week at the Shed in New York, focuses on the Indigenous people of the Amazon and their ongoing fight to survive. Their plight is a universal story and an unflinching meditation on the human condition, both its virtues and its most depraved depths, and the cycles of destruction that define us. At the show’s heart is the power of art to transcend but also its limitations. The show runs through April 16 and is presented by Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.
The exhibition include more than 80 drawings and paintings by Yanomami artists André Taniki, Ehuana Yaira, Joseca Mokahesi, Orlando Nakɨ uxima, Poraco Hɨko, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, and Vital Warasi. Visitors will also encounter new video works by contemporary Yanomami filmmakers Aida Harika, Edmar Tokorino, Morzaniel Tramari, and Roseane Yariana.
These works are presented alongside more than 200 photographs by Claudia Andujar that trace the artist’s experiences with the Yanomami over five decades and continue to raise visibility for their struggle to protect their land, people, and culture. The dialogue established between the contemporary Yanomami artists’ work and Andujar’s photographs offers an unprecedented vision of Yanomami culture, society, and visual art. The works by these contemporary Yanomami artists are on view in New York for the first time at The Shed, bringing together the most extensive presentation of Yanomami art in the US to date.
“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.” —Davi Kopenawa, Yanomami shaman
The Yanomami Struggle Feb 3 - April 16
Wednesdays at 12 pm, 2 pm, 4 pm
Fridays at 12 pm, 2 pm, 6 pm
Saturdays at 12 pm, 2 pm, 4 pm
The Shed is located at 545 West 30th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues.
Susi Korihana thëri, Catrimani region (1972–1974). Artwork © Claudia Andujar. Collection of the artist.
Guests from the Xaxanapi community enter the collective house of their Korihana thëri hosts for the inauguration of the reahu ceremony, Catrimani(1974). Artwork © Claudia Andujar. Collection of the artist.
