Jaider Esbell

He grew up amidst the territorial and cultural rights movements of the Macush in the 1980s and 1990s, and under the spiritual influence of Bernaldina Macushi, master of the ceremonial traditions of her people. He described himself as an “artivist” (artist activist). He was also an independent exhibition curator — a piya’san (shaman) curator in his own words – and a tireless promotor of Arte Indígena Contemporânea. (Contemporary Indigenous Art) His painting, whose imagery is mainly rooted in indigenous cosmologies, evokes the ancestral resistance of indigenous populations to colonialism, whilst challenging the hegemonic vision of Western art.  In 2012, Jaider Esbell published his first book and the following year he opened his own gallery in Boa Vista. In 2016, he was awarded the PIPA Prize, one of the major contemporary art awards in Brazil, which allowed him to devote himself fully to his art. In 2021, the São Paulo Biennal invited him to curate a major exhibition of contemporary art by indigenous artists of Brazil,  Moquêm Surarî, at the Museum of Modern Art. He died in November 2021, at the height of his artistic career. His political commitment and his works will remain etched in the memory of the struggle of Amerindian people, and more widely, in that of contemporary art.  

The Fondation Cartier’s collection includes a work by Jaider Esbell titled Makunaimî cria os espelho universal (2021), presented during the Exposition Générale (2025-2026). In 2022, it formed part of the exhibition Les Vivants, organised by the Fondation Cartier at Lille3000 and of Siamo Foresta in Milan, an exhibition that staged an unprecedented encounter between indigenous and non-indigenous thinkers and artists around the theme of the forest.