Are Walking Birds
In ancient Tupi, the Tupinambá language, Ka’a Pûera – or capoeira – are places used for planting crops. After the harvest, these spaces are left to rest, thus creating a place with lower vegetation, a regenerated forest. At first glance, this space may seem infertile and inhospitable, but it is in the capoeira that there is also a great variety of medicinal plants. Where there is apparently no life, there is the possibility of resurgence: with the soil recovering, it can soon become new plots for the community’s livelihood or a new forest.
Capoeira is also a small bird that flocks together in dense forests, with brown, orange, and gray feathers that provide camouflage on the forest floor. These are survival strategies against predators to defend their territories – and they are similar to the struggle of the Indigenous peoples, who are like Ka’a Pûera, birds that walk in forests that resurface.
The Hãhãwpuá Pavilion tells a story of Indigenous resistance in Brazil, of adaptations in the face of climate emergencies and of the body present in the retaking of the land. Hãhãwpuá is what the Pataxó call this great territory that was given the name Brazil, and which before the arrival of the colonizers was called by so many other names. It is important to recognize Brazil as Indigenous land and that the more than three hundred nations that live in this land continue their struggles today in defense of their memories and traditional knowledge. This resistance of Indigenous peoples as humans-birds-memory-nature is for us to remember those who are on the margins, dispossessed, invisibilized, imprisoned, and whose rights have been violated, because even in apparently infertile soil, there is always the possibility of resurgence and resistance.
Arissana Pataxó, Denilson Baniwa and Gustavo Caboco Wapichana
Culture and art are tools for transformation. Being inseparable, it is this aesthetic – and ethical – core of life that is uniquely capable of mobilizing hearts and minds around a national identity founded on diversity, justice, and citizenship. La Biennale di Venezia, an event with a long tradition in the art world, is the perfect stage for celebrating this identity. At this international gathering, we show our culture, our richest and most powerful assets, to our neighbors around the world, and through the dialogues established in these exchanges, we transform and are transformed.
The Ministry of Culture, like our national participation in Venice, is an achievement by the people for the people. Social and cultural development, the main objective of the Ministry of Culture, is only possible if it goes hand in hand with our multiple ethnic and historical roots. The Brazilian Pavilion, named Hãhãwpuá for this exhibition, is the home of our culture at the Biennale. There’s nothing better than being able to find within it a discussion with art about the most difficult and necessary issues of our time: marginalization, deterritorialization, and rights violations, reflecting on the resistance of indigenous peoples and their proposals for a more sustainable and civic world. Without this conversation, or without art, there is no Brazil – or future.
The Federal Government is proud of its long-standing partnership with the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, an institution whose foundations are the promotion of culture and the democratization of art. The realization of projects such as Ka’a Pûera: we are walking birds is a way of contributing to a constant re-enchantment with our ancestry and strengthens the hope of a future that is increasingly open to everyone. May the talents present at the Hãhãwpuá Pavilion serve as inspiration for the transformation we dream of!
Margareth Menezes
Minister of Culture
La Biennale di Venezia is one of the most traditional institutions organizing cultural events in the world, with a century-long history of international encounters, offering a consolidated platform for the wealth and diversity of global contemporary art production. Being present at Biennale Arte 2024 not only puts Brazil once again in the midst of the most current creations and debates of our time, but also allows us to share our own national narratives and perspectives with the large audience that the event always attracts.
This year’s exhibition, entitled Ka’a Pûera: we are walking birds, is a testimony to the resistance and resilience of Brazil’s Indigenous peoples. The name of the Brazilian Pavilion in this edition, “Hãhãwpuá”, reflects the country’s understanding of itself as an Indigenous land, honoring the many nations that have inhabited this vast territory for many centuries before it was established as a State. This exhibition not only highlights the importance of preserving Indigenous cultures and traditions, but also invites us to reflect on the indispensable issues linked to them, such as environmental preservation and the strengthening of human rights.
The stories told by the artists’ work show significant pathways in the arduous process we have ahead of us. The present is experiencing a moment of convergence between the past and the future as a way of indicating possibilities for modes of existence that are more aligned with the re-establishment of relations between the individual and the collective, between communities and the nature that surrounds them, and between Brazil and Hãhãwpuá.
The prerogative of the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo to stage Brazil’s official participation at the Biennale is the fruit of a long-standing partnership with the Federal Government, in recognition of the Fundação’s work in promoting Brazilian culture abroad. Our ongoing collaboration reflects our mutual commitment to Brazilian art on a global scale, strengthening our position as leading players in the arts and promoting cultural dialogue and cooperation between nations – an imperative for building a more sustainable, diverse, and democratic future.
Andrea Pinheiro
President – Fundação Bienal de São Paulo
Arissana Pataxó is an artist of the Pataxó ethnic group. She produces art in a variety of techniques, addressing indigenous issues as part of the contemporary world. She joined the fine arts course at the Escola de Belas Artes – UFBA (Salvador, BA) in 2005 and finished in 2009. Throughout her studies, she developed art education extension activities with the Pataxó people: workshops and the production of teaching materials. As well as the Pataxó, she continues to work with other indigenous peoples in Bahia with art education activities and the production of teaching materials. In 2007, she held her first solo exhibition Sob o olhar Pataxó at the Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia of the UFBA in Salvador, Bahia. Since then, she has entered the artistic world, participating in various exhibitions, such as the Salão Regional de Artes Visuais de Porto Seguro in 2009 (BA), the international Eco Arte exhibition at the Museu de Arte de Montenegro in 2011 (RS) and, most recently, the 2013-2014 traveling exhibition Mira ! Artes visuais Contemporâneas dos Povos Indígenas, held in Belo Horizonte (MG) and Brasília (DF).
Denilson Baniwa was born in Barcelos, in the interior of Amazonas. Denilson Baniwa is indigenous to the Baniwa people. He currently lives and works in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro. As an activist for the rights of Indigenous peoples, he has been giving talks, workshops and courses since 2015, with a strong presence in the south and southeast of Brazil and also in Bahia. In 2018, she held the exhibition Terra Brasilis: o agro não é pop! at the Art Gallery of the Universidade Federal Fluminense, also in Niterói, as part of the project Brasil: A Margem, promoted by the university. In the same year, he took part in the artistic residency of the fourth edition of the Corpus Urbis Festival, held in Oiapoque, Amapá. He has had exhibitions at the CCBB, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, CCSP, Centro de Artes Helio Oiticica, Museu Afro Brasil, MASP, MAR, the 35th Bienal de São Paulo and the Sydney Biennial. As well as being a visual artist, Denilson is also a publicist, an articulator of digital culture and hacking, contributing to the construction of Indigenous imagery in various media such as magazines, films and TV series. In 2019 he won the Pipa Award in the online category and in 2021 he was one of the winners nominated by the jury.
Gustavo Caboco Wapichana is a Wapichana visual artist working in the Paraná-Roraima network and on the paths back to the land. His work in drawing-document, painting, text, embroidery, animation and performance proposes ways of reflecting on the displacement of indigenous bodies, the retaking of memory and autonomous research in museum collections to contribute to the struggle of indigenous peoples. In 2001, he made his first Wapichana “return to the land”. In 2018, he won the FNLIJ Tamoios Contest for Texts by Indigenous Writers with his text “Semente de Caboco”. In 2019, he published his first book, “Baaraz Kawau”, at the Museu Paranaense in Curitiba, and took part in the VAIVÉM exhibition at the CCBB. He took part in the VÉXOA – nós sabemos exhibition at the Pinacoteca and won the 3rd seLecT Art and Education Award in 2020. He was a guest artist at the 34th Bienal de São Paulo and the Moquém Surarï exhibition at MAM – São Paulo in 2021. In 2022, he held the performance encontro di-fuso at the University of Manchester during the Festival of Latin American Anti-Racist and Decolonial Art, was invited to the indigenous encounter “aabaakwad” at the Sámi pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia, was a guest artist at the 32nd CCSP exhibition program with Coma Colonial, held the solo show ouvir àterra at Millan (São Paulo), launched the book “Baaraz Ka’aupan” at the Museu Paranaense in Curitiba.
Glicéria Tupinambá, 1982, Serra do Padeiro village, Tupinambá Indigenous Land of Olivença, Bahia. Also known as Célia Tupinambá, she was born and raised in Serra do Padeiro, in the Tupinambá Indigenous Land of Olivença, Bahia. She is doing a master’s degree in the Postgraduate Program in Social Anthropology at UFRJ.
In 2006, after the Tupinambá people took back their land in Serra do Padeiro, Célia decided to make the first Tupinambá mantle, to thank the enchanted. The making of the cloaks is literally sewn into the history of the territory, its daily life, its memory.
In 2021, the mantle was the protagonist of the exhibition Kwá yapé turusú yuriri Assojaba tupinambá [This is the great return of the Tupinambá mantle], at Funarte in Brasília. More recently, Célia won the 10th edition of the ZUM/IMS Photography Scholarship with the project Nós somos pássaros que andam [We are walking birds]. Glicéria won the Pipa 2023 Award.
Glicéria works with the Tupinambá communities of Serra do Padeiro and Olivença, in Bahia.
Olinda Tupinambá, 1989, Bahia. Lives and works in Pau Brasil, Bahia. She is an artist, journalist, documentary maker, filmmaker and environmental activist. She is a Tupinambá from the Tupinambá Indigenous Land of Olivença, Bahia, and also a Pataxó Hãhãhãe, from the Caramuru-Paraguaçu Indigenous Land, in the south of Bahia, where she lives.
Through audiovisual language, she creates fictional narratives that explore pressing issues such as the environmental question, ethnic resistance and the indigenous presence in contemporary times. She took part in the exhibition Véxoa: nós sabemos, held at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo in 2020, where she presented the film Kaapora – O chamado das matas, an entity that is also mobilized in the video installation Equilíbrio, shown at the Hãhãwpuá Pavilion.
Ziel Karapotó, 1994, Terra Nova Village, Alagoas. Lives and works in Recife. Indigenous to the Karapotó ethnic group, from the Terra Nova community, Alagoas. He has been working since 2012 in the fields of visual arts, performance, installation, curating, art education and audiovisual. He has a degree in visual arts from the Universidade Federal do Pernambuco and is a visiting researcher at IHAC/UFBA. His research focuses on Indigenous poetics, identity configurations and racism in relation to original ethnicities, especially indigenous peoples in the Northeast of Brazil.
He is a member of the research projects Culture of Anti-racism in Latin America (CARLA – UFBA and the University of Manchester) and Science and Indigenous Art in the Northeast (CAIN/UFPE), and is general coordinator of the Association of Indigenous People in Urban Context Karaxuwanassu – ASSICUKA.
