Page 98 - ARTE!Brasileiros #46

THE PLACE OF ART ENGLISH VERSION
Other, of 2015, exhibited at the Carioca headquarters, brought together the artist’s
production in the 1960’s and 1970’s, especially as a photojournalist, but covering series
that already pointed to her particular strategy of producing images from an effective
involvement. The show even got the photos for the special edition of the magazine
Reality, about the Amazon, of 1971. It was then his first contact with the Yanomami.
Three years later, in 1974, she returned equipped to remain a long time among those
with whom she would live for more than four decades. “I think one of their most
wonderful things is that they always seem to be happy. I hear them laughing in the
morning, shouting joyfully, talking, singing. At night, when it gets dark, they lie on their
nets and it’s the same thing for hours”, says the Brazilian naturalized Swiss, in one of
the audios available at the show, held in 1974, one of hes first trips to Catrimani, the
most visited people by her.
The present exposition is divided into two parts, and the first attests to this contagious
joy of the Yanomami in the woods, in the maloca, in their rituals of celebration and in
connection with the spirits of the forest. Some images are known, but there is a lot of
new material. In general, they reinforce the intimate, affective, delicate relationship
between the photographer and her portraits. They are close-up images of a witness
who does not consider himself distant and who, to better convey what she sees, uses
simple features, such as passing vaseline on the edges of the camera lens, to blur the
surroundings, startling who is in the center of the image.
Still in this first room, as there are no walls dividing the space, but the photographs
are hanging from the ceiling, there is almost a simulation of the coexistence of families
in their huts. Undoubtedly it is an ethical option, of living together, which follows the
respect that Andujar dedicates in the construction of images.
On the second floor, Nogueira highlights the militant character of Andujar, with
the Marcados series, held in 1983, when with two doctors vaccinated hundreds of
Yanomamis, protecting them against diseases that came along with the roads opened
by the military dictatorship.
The highlight, however, is the installation of the Genocide of the Yanomami: Death
of Brazil, created in 1989 and exhibited in the same year at the São Paulo Museum
of Art (Masp) against the threat of demarcation of indigenous land by the Sarney
government, in 19 “islands” in the Amazon, which would end by smothering them.
The creation of the Yanomami territory, an area twice the size of Belgium, would occur
three years later in 1992 under the Collor government. For some theorists, because
of Andujar’s commitment to the cause, this could be considered the greatest work
of land art existing.
The installation was originally set up with a system of slide projectors, but in IMS is
made with a digital system, which projects photos of Andujar and, through filters
and lights, creates a narrative of a world in harmony which is gradually being
destroyed. What has been an urgent cause for 30 years is back in front of the
president-elect’s statements, who thinks that demarcation of indigenous territory
is “like keeping a zoo”.

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