Yanomami, l’esprit de la forêt

The principle of the exhibition Yanomami, l’esprit de la forêt, organized by the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in 2003, was to spark a meeting between the shamans from a Yanomami village in the Brazilian Amazon and five international artists. The latter were each welcomed in the Yanomami community before testing their creative worlds against shamanic images, with no intention to illustrate or translate, simply by rolling out a space of “free association.”
Archive photographs, geographic maps, and contemporary works presented in the exhibition catalog relate the unique experience of the artists invited to Watoriki and the history of the Yanomami people. Contemporary art and mythical thought prove to be secretly in tune with each other, asserting the power of the image that is dreamed, thought, or told.