Exhibition in collaboration with Instituto Moreira Salles (Brazil) 261, boulevard Raspail 75014 Paris — fondation.cartier.com PRESS KIT PRESS MANAGER Matthieu Simonnet [email protected] Tél. +33 (0)1 42 18 56 77 PRESS OFFICER Sophie Lawani-Wesley [email protected] Tél. +33 (0)1 42 18 56 65 fondation.cartier.com/presse FONDATION CARTIER POUR L’ART CONTEMPORAIN fondation.cartier.com 261, Boulevard Raspail 75014 Paris Cover: Claudia Andujar, The young Susi Korihana thëri swimming, Catrimani, Roraima, 1972–74. Infrared film, 68 × 102 cm. Collection of the artist. © Claudia Andujar. 3 TESTIMONY FROM DAVI KOPENAWA 5 CLAUDIA ANDUJAR, THE YANOMAMI STRUGGLE 8 PRESS IMAGES 10 MAP OF YANOMAMI TERRITORY 12 BIOGRAPHIES 14 EXCERPTS FROM THE EXHIBITION CATALOG 19 EXHIBITION CATALOG 22 AROUND THE EXHIBITION 24 PROGRAM 2020 28 MEDIA PARTNERS 29 INFORMATION 12 “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 Indian, to make friends. She is not Yanomami, but she is a true friend. She took photographs of childbirth, of women, of children. 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 non-indigenous people. It was good that she gave me the bow and arrow, 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 their images are 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 Speech given on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition Claudia Andujar, A luta Yanomami at the Instituto Moreira Salles (Brazil, January 2018) 5 1 “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 AUDUJAR 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 devotes her life to photographing and protecting the Yanomami, one of Brazil’s largest indigenous groups. 15 7 Based on four years of research in the photographer’s archive, this new exhibition curated by Thyago Nogueira for the INTERPRETING YANOMAMI CULTURE Instituto Moreira Salles in Brazil, will focus on her work from this period, bringing together over three hundred photographs, Claudia Andujar first met the Yanomami in 1971 while her audiovisual installation as well as a series of Yanomami working on an article about the Amazon for Realidade magazine. drawings. The exhibition will explore Claudia Andujar’s Fascinated by the culture of this isolated community, she decided extraordinary contribution to the art of photography as well as to embark on an in-depth photographic essay on their daily life her major role as a human rights activist in the defense of the after receiving a Guggenheim fellowship to support the project. Yanomami. It is divided into two sections reflecting the dual From the very beginning, her approach differed greatly from nature of a career committed to both art and activism. The first the straightforward documentary style of her contemporaries. section presents the photographs from her first seven years The photographs she made during this period show how she living with the Yanomami, showing how she grappled with the experimented with a variety of photographic techniques in challenges of visually interpreting a complex culture. The second an attempt to visually translate the shamanic culture of the features the work she produced during her period of activism, Yanomami. Applying Vaseline to the lens of her camera, using when she began to use her photography as a tool among others flash devices, oil lamps, and infrared film, she created visual for political change. distortions, streaks of light, and saturated colors, imbuing her Claudia Andujar was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in 1931 images with a feeling of the otherworldly. and currently lives and works in São Paulo. She grew up in Claudia Andujar also developed a series of sober black- Transylvania, which at the time had recently been incorporated and-white portraits that capture the grace and dignity of the to Romania after years of Hungarian domination. During WWII, Yanomami. Focusing closely on faces and body fragments, Claudia’s father, a Hungarian Jew, was deported to Dachau where she tightly frames her images, using a dramatic chiaroscuro to he was killed along with most of her paternal relatives. create a feeling of intimacy and draw attention to individual Claudia Andujar fled with her mother to Switzlerand, psychological states. Alongside the many photographs taken immigrated first to the United States in 1946, then to Brazil in during this period, the exhibition will also present a selection of 1955 where she began a career as a photojournalist. 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 shamanic visions will be presented in the exhibition. 6 8 The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain has supported POLITICAL ACTIVISM the Yanomami cause and the work of Claudia Andujar for over twenty years. Claudia Andujar and Yanomami artists such as By the late 1970s, Claudia Andujar had reached a turning Taniki, Joseca, Ehuana, and Kalepi have participated in several point in her career. The construction of a transcontinental exhibitions and are amongst the artists present in our collection. highway in the Amazon, initiated by Brazil’s military The Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain presented her government, opened up the region to deforestation as well work for the first time in 2003 in the exhibition Yanomami, Spirit as invasive agricultural programs, bringing epidemics to of the Forest. Claudia Andujar renewed her collaboration with the the Yanomami and leading to the annihilation of entire Fondation Cartier in 2012 with the exhibition Histoires de voir: communities. This situation reminded her of the genocide in Show and Tell, in which she presented the work of Taniki, the Europe, and its impact on her was such that she decided to first Yanomami artist to work on paper. In 2013, she participated deepen her commitment to the Yanomami struggle. In 1978 in the exhibition América Latina, 1960-2013 with Marcados, a she founded, with the missionary Carlo Zacquini and the moving series of id photographs she took during a vaccination anthropologist Bruce Albert, the Commissão Pro-Yanomani campaign she led between 1981 and 1983 throughout (CCPY) and began a fourteen-year-long campaign to designate Yanomami territory. their homeland. At this point in her career photography, she put her artistic project aside and used photography primarily as a The Fondation Cartier is pleased to announce the presence means to raise awareness and support her cause. of Claudia Andujar, Davi Kopenawa, Dario Kopenawa, Bruce In the early 1980s, Claudia Andujar took a series of black- Albert, Carlo Zacquini and Thyago Nogueira at the exhibition’s and-white portraits of the Yanomami as part of a vaccination opening events. They will also participate in the Night campaign. They are wearing numbered labels to help identify Yanomami (January 30, 2020), a talk organized on this occasion. 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 14 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 The exhibition's future venues spokesman, Davi Kopenawa, the Brazilian government agreed As part of the joint partnership between the Fondation to legally demarcate Yanomami territory.