Masp planned a year dedicated to Indigenous Histories

MASP 2023 program looks at the different indigenous histories around the world. Throughout the year, a series of activities will be presented – exhibitions, courses, lectures, workshops, and publications – proposing to approach and debate the complexity of indigenous materials, cultures, philosophies, and cosmologies, in addition to discussing their representations in art and the silence of the official art history regarding the indigenous artistic production.

This year’s program continues the exhibitions dedicated to Histories at MASP, which have been running since 2016 and included Childhood Histories (2016), Histories of Sexuality (2017), Afro-Atlantic Histories (2018), Women’s Histories, Feminist Histories (2019), Histories of Dance (2020), and Brazilian Histories (2021-22). As part of this concept, the 2023 series proposes new, more inclusive, diverse, and plural visual narratives about indigenous histories, bringing together a diversity of voices not only by adding them to the body of artists and works of the exhibitions, but also in the curatorial structure.

Carmézia Emiliano: The Tree of Life
March 24th – June 11th, 2023
Curatorship: Amanda Carneiro, assistant curator at MASP

Carmézia Emiliano (Maloca do Japó, Normandia, Roraima, 1960) is an artist of Macuxi origin. In the 1990s she moved to the state capital of Boa Vista and also started painting. Her paintings depict landscapes, objects of material culture, and the daily life of her community: ‘My art is a service I render to the culture of my people, this is the greatest happiness of all,’ the artist states. Originally from the border region with Venezuela and Guyana, close Mount Roraima, the artist reflects through her work about the plethora of mirrored, intricate, and interconnected details of her observation of nature and community life.

MAHKU: Visions
March 24th – June 11th, 2023
Curatorship: Adriano Pedrosa, artistic director at MASP; Guilherme Giufrida, assistant curator at MASP; Ibã Huni Kuin, guest curator

The exhibition MAHKU: Visions marks the ten years of the collective MAHKU, the Huni Kuin Artist Movement. Officially created in 2013, the group began its work translating traditional Huni Kuin chants into figurative drawings during Indigenous Education classes at the Universidade Federal do Acre (UFAC). The paintings made by the group originate both from translations and records of chants, myths, and histories of their ancestry, as well as from visual experiences generated by the rituals of nixi pae, which involves the ingestion of ayahuasca, called mirações (visions) – which gives title to the exhibition at MASP.

Video Room: Bepunu Mebengokré Collective
March 24th – June 18th, 2023
Curatorship: Edson Kayapó, assistant curator of indigenous art at MASP

The Bepunu Mebengokré collective, coordinated by the young leader and filmmaker Bepunu, has taken the lead in presenting the histories and ancestries of the Mebengokré people to non-indigenous society by means of audiovisual technologies. The paths taken by the narrative scripts, as well as the focus of the collective’s cameras, center their actions on cosmologies, the relationship with the forest, and the visibility of silenced stories. The idea of the collective is to facilitate the access of Brazilian society and the international community to the histories of the Mebengokré ancestors, contributing to the enforcement of rights of this people nowadays and to fight ecocide in the Brazilian Amazon.

Paul Gauguin: o outro e eu
April 28th – August 6th, 2023
Curatorship: Adriano Pedrosa, artistic director at MASP; Fernando Oliva, curator at MASP; Laura Cosendey, assistant curator at MASP

Paul Gauguin: o outro e eu is the first exhibition to problematize Gauguin’s relationship with the idea of otherness and exoticizing the ‘other.’ In a critical manner, the exhibition addresses central problems in his work and focuses on two emblematic themes: the self-portraits and the works produced in Tahiti (French Polynesia), where he made his best-known paintings and spent most of the last decade of his life. His works from this period raise themes such as contested notions of primitivism, an imaginary about the ‘exotic’ and the ‘tropics,’ and cultural appropriation; as well as issues related to sexuality, androgyny, and the eroticization of the female body. Paul Gauguin: o outro e eu investigates the tension between his biography, the image he created of himself as an artist, and the way his work reinforced an imaginary about the ‘other.’ The Tahiti represented by Gauguin went beyond the reality he encountered, reproducing the fantasies of an European man regarding a paradise island, untouched by the European ‘civilization.’ The exhibition is part of a series of shows that seek to take on a critical and analytical perspective of canonical European artists present in the MASP collection – which includes two works by Gauguin –, problematizing his work in light of contemporary issues.

The exhibition features key works by the artist gathered through international loans from museums, such as the Metropolitan Museum (New York), the National Gallery of Art (Washington), the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), Musée d’Orsay (Paris), Tate (London), the National Gallery (London), among other institutions from the United States and Europe.

Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe
June 30th – September 24th, 2023
Curatorship: André Mesquita, curator at MASP; David Ribeiro, curatorial assistant at MASP

MASP presents an exhibition dedicated to the work of Yanomami artist Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe. Born in 1971 in the Sheroana indigenous community, in the Venezuelan Amazon, Hakihiiwe currently lives between Caracas and Mahekototeri, a community in the upper Orinoco region. Through drawing, the artist creates a work that recovers ancestral traditions and the art found in the daily life of his community, present in body paintings and domestic utensils. The artist produces minimal and abstract drawings, making use of straight and curved lines, points, and shapes that recall these references, as well as the fauna and flora of the forests, elaborating an unusual visual grammar connected to Amazonian cosmologies. Hakihiiwe began producing in the 1990s, after meeting Mexican artist Laura Anderson Barbata. Together they developed a technique for producing paper with native plant fibers – material used by the artist as a support for his drawings.

Comodato MASP Landmann — cerâmicas e metais pré-colombianos
June 30th – September 10th, 2023
Curatorship: Marcia Arcuri, assistant curator of pre-Columbian art at MASP; assisted by Leandro Muniz, curatorial assistant at MASP

The exhibition Comodato MASP Landmann — cerâmicas e metais pré-colombianos will bring together approximately 750 archaeological pieces produced by Amerindian peoples between the 7th century B.C. and 16th century. The objects testify to the vast historical and scientific legacy built by the ancient societies of the American continent. The exhibition features archaeological artifacts attributed to cultures that flourished remotely in regions of Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Colombia – such as Chavin, Paracas, Nasca, Moche, Huari, Lambayeque, Chimu, Chancay, Inca, Calima, Tolima, Zenú, Muísca, as well as Marajoara pieces from the Brazilian Amazon.

Video Room: Sky Hopinka
June 30th – August 13th, 2023
Curatorship: María Inés Rodríguez, associate curator of modern and contemporary art

Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) was born and raised in Ferndale, WA, and spent several years in Palm Springs and Riverside, CA, Portland, OR, and Milwaukee, WI. In Portland, he studied and taught Chinuk Wawa, a language native to the Columbia River basin. His videos, photos, and writings revolve around his views of the landscape and the indigenous land.

Video Room: Brook Andrews
August 25th – October 8th, 2023
Curatorship: Leandro Muniz, curatorial assistant at MASP

Using archival materials, including 19th and 20th century photographs, films, cartoons, interviews, and news reports, Australian artist and curator Brook Andrew investigates the ways in which Aboriginal peoples, especially the Wiradjuri and Ngunawal – from whom he is descended, along with Celt and Jewish origins – have their memory represented and preserved. In addition to discussing the historical oppression and power relations developed in the process of colonization of the Australian territory, Andrew is interested in the cultural flows established in this period. His work is somewhat marked by a logic of collage, contrasting documents and acid colors, native peoples’ graphics and mural paintings, words in the Wiradjuri language and neons. His videos further radicalize this disjunctive structure: using abrupt edits and kind of a desktop language, the artist contrasts the different materials collected in his research, creating fragmentary narratives that question social erasures, as well as legal and cultural structures.

Indigenous Histories
October 20th, 2023 – February 25th, 2024
Organized by MASP in collaboration with the Kode Bergen Art Museum, Norway
Curatorship: Edson Kayapó, associate curator of indigenous art at MASP; Kassia Borges Karajá, associate curator of indigenous art at MASP; and Renata Tupinambá, associate curator of indigenous art at MASP. Guest curators: Abraham Cruzvillegas (Mexico), Irene Snarby (Sámi, Norway), Nigel Borell (Maori, New Zealand), and Sandra Gamarra (Peru), among others.

The major group exhibition Indigenous Histories presents different accounts of indigenous histories of the world through art and visual cultures, bringing together works from multiple media, typologies, origins, and periods. Despite the international scope and temporal breadth of the exhibition, it is neither a comprehensive nor an encyclopedic approach – quite the opposite. In this sense, it is important to take into consideration the particular meaning of ‘histórias’ in Portuguese, which is quite different from the corresponding term in English. ‘Histórias’ encompasses both fiction and non-fiction, historical and personal accounts, of public and private nature, at micro or macro level, and thus has a more polyphonic, speculative, open-ended, incomplete, procedural, and fragmented quality than the traditional notion of history.

Indigenous Histories comprises eight sections: seven dedicated to different regions of the world and one themed around indigenous activism. The seven regional sections will address indigenous histories from different territories in Oceania, North America, South America, and Scandinavia. The aim is not to fully represent the vast and complex indigenous histories of each particular region, but rather to provide a cross-section, a fragment, or a sample of these histories in a concise but relevant selection, so that this approach can be juxtaposed to others from different parts of the world. Each of the regional clusters will be curated or co-curated by Indigenous curators or artists of Indigenous origin.

Melissa Cody
October 20th, 2023 – February 25th, 2024
Curatorship: Isabella Rjeille, curator at MASP

Melissa Cody (b. 1983, No Water Mesa, Arizona, USA) is a Navajo artist, part of the fourth generation of artists in her family. Cody’s weavings of small, medium, and large proportions are made from the traditional technique of her people and handed down from one generation to the next. Her style is associated with the Germantown Revival, a stylistic movement in weaving named after the wool that the government of Germantown, Pennsylvania (USA), provided to the indigenous people during the historical episode known as the ‘Long Walk’ (1864). This episode recounts the forced migration of the Navajo people from their traditional lands in Arizona all the way to New Mexico due to measures adopted by the United States government. This deportation profoundly impacted the contemporary notion of identity and territory among the Navajo. In her work, Cody blends traditional Navajo patterns and symbols with references from the pixelated world of computers to the pop universe, countering the processes that seek to fix indigenous cultures in an idyllic past.

Video Room: Glicéria Tupinambá and Alexandre Mortágua
October 20th – December 3rd, 2023
Curatorship: Renata Tupinambá, assistant curator of indigenous art at MASP

For the Video Room, Glicéria Tupinambá and Alexandre Mortágua present Quando o manto fala e o que o manto diz (2023). The film records Glicéria Tupinambá’s process of reconnecting with the dormant knowledge of her village. The Tupinambá cloak gains a new voice through the hands of the artist from Serra do Padeiro.

Video Room: Cecilia Vicuña
December 15th, 2023 – January 28th, 2024
Curatorship: Kássia Borges, associate curator of indigenous art at MASP

Cecilia Vicuña Ramírez (Santiago, July 22nd, 1948) is a Chilean poet, filmmaker, and visual artist based in New York. Her work deals with themes like memory, ecology, human rights, and feminism. Her research critiques the modern world, as well as politics of ecological destruction and cultural homogenization. Her artistic practices are linked to the agendas of feminism and nature, which has led her to be linked to the term ecofeminism. By articulating poetry, video, painting, and ritual, the Chilean artist rescues indigenous knowledge about the power of women and the knowledge of the beings of the forest. In a bricolage between history and myths, Cecilia creates a heterogeneous, poignant, real, and sensitive work.

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