Yanomami, Spirit of the Forest

This exchange was organized in collaboration with the shamans of Watoriki in a conscious effort to work with a single Yanomami community, thus achieving unity of place, time and action. In response to commissions by the Fondation Cartier, these artists allowed their individual creative worlds to be exposed to the Yanomami concept of shamanic images. The show structures itself on this idea of “free associations”.

Consequently, Yanomami, Spirit of the Forest features neither tribal finery or feathers, nor any “Amerindian” or “crossover” art. Nor is this an ethnological or humanitarian exhibition. Treating Yanomami thought on an equal footing, this exhibition’s films, photographs, paintings, sculptures and video installations offer a web of correspondences relating to the major themes of the cosmological ideas and visionary experience of the eleven shamans of the village of Watoriki.