Tembiapo: Art and Peoples of Healing
A Conversation with Sandra Benites
Mediation: Luiz Guilherme Vergara
Luiz Guilherme Vergara: Good afternoon. Welcome, everyone. Many thanks to the Companhia de Mystérios e Novidades for hosting us today and Lígia Veiga for her marvelous conch call, and especially to Sandra Benites for generously accepting our invitation to speak here today.
Some years ago, at an international seminar on Transculturalism at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Niterói (MAC Niterói), one of the indigenous leaders began his talk by saying that “we [indigenous] peoples think roundly.” Thinking roundly is an image that significantly contrasts with that of the traditions of capitalist and colonial linear education. So, I am delighted to invite Sandra Benites here today to share her thoughts and “round” narratives with us.
Sandra Benites is a history and philosophy teacher at primary and secondary levels. She has a master’s degree in social anthropology from UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) affiliated with Brazil’s National Museum and is a doctoral candidate at the same institution. She was assistant curator at MASP (Museum of Art of São Paulo). She also curated the exhibition Dja Guata Porã: Rio de Janeiro Indígena (Walking Collectively/Constructing the Path While We Walk: Indigenous Rio de Janeiro) with Clarissa Diniz, Pablo Lafuente and José Ribamar Bessa held at the Rio Art Museum (MAR) in 2017-2018. She is currently part of the curatorial team at the Museum of Indigenous Cultures in São Paulo.1
In her master’s research, Sandra points to the meaning of art as another language, a constant poiesis that is not fixed or static. She also addresses the disagreements and conflicts in indigenous villages between the formal school system and Guarani education. Drawing on bilingualism as an educational tool, she presents a practical description through lived experiences of the ways in which the Nhandeva Guarani transmit knowledge to their children and young people. Nhandeva stories are the foundational basis for behaviors, beliefs, and personalities. What stands out here is how this process is different for Guarani women and Guarani men, with an emphasis on the story of Nhandesy Eté, a female figure in Guarani cosmology.
These traditions are part of what we will explore today. This conversation is also part of the course and transdisciplinary seminar series “Shells, Sieves and Hems: Artistic, Clinical and Caring Practices in the Contemporary”, with various invited speakers organized by Jessica Gogan as part of her postdoctoral research at PPGCA/UFF (Graduate Program in Contemporary Studies of the Arts/Federal Fluminense University). I think we’re part of the hems? That seam on the inside. Sewing relationships of art, clinic and care. Perhaps it is unnecessary for indigenous people to emphasize this coming together, as many of their celebrations and life practices bring health, therapy, education, and art together naturally. But our capitalist and colonial legacies have made us peoples of illness, of separateness. So, our regenerative path is to return to the path of synthesis and of connectivity. For today’s seminar, I am interested in provoking a reflection and discussion around the need for change that cuts across and denounces the obsolete dichotomies of aesthetic debates in the field of the arts, philosophy and thought. A change that reveals the barriers inherited from humanism and Eurocentrism, fragmented by the blindness of a human-nature dualism, a hallmark of the Anthropocene. In this abysmal scenario, democratic institutions of the arts, education, and public health are also collapsing.
So, the aim of this conversation is to dialogue with Sandra Benites’ trajectory of bridge-building between plural forms of art and culture and to enable a collective sharing of practices, knowledge, and tangible intuitions of the future. We are interested in educational, therapeutic, and artistic practices and collective health clinics that can produce connectivity, collectivity, and new agencies of subjectivity and that can reconfigure body, heart, spirituality, and institutional dimensions in experimental territorializations of ancestral futures.
Today’s encounter also draws on a number of previous conversations with Sandra Benites in the run-up to my mediation of the Indigenous Peoples Forum panel on art, culture and health with various indigenous representatives, held as part of the 15th international congress of Rede Unida (Collective Health Network) in 2022. This discussion recognized the extent to which community knowledge and practices, whether day-to-day or symbolic rituals, point to the need for an urgent change in values, where we might identify counter-colonial and counter-capitalist ways of doing things and challenge the business as usual of our institutions in the arts, education, health, spirituality, and religion.
On this occasion and in our conversations, Sandra brought up some words/concepts in Guaraní that I think are key to our “ancestral futures”2 and that will ground our discussion today. I’ll start with tembiapo, which is the title of today’s meeting. I asked her if there was a word in Guarani for art and she said: “Tembiapo, which comes from tembi, the production of relationships, processes of belonging.” It also means heart, stomach, and feeling. Apo means handmade, with your hands. An artist is someone who has the ability to make baskets, dance, and carve animals out of wood. It is in this doing where knowledge becomes collective, where the community recognizes itself. Another key word/concept/practice that Sandra brought up is hendu. Hendu means listening, listening with the body, also in the sense of “asking permission to be part of what you hear.” How beautiful: being part of what you hear. And she continues: “[…] being part of what you’re listening to; listening with the heart-body.” This sense of shared responsibility applies to everything: humans, nature, and non-humans. “We are part of what we hunt”. Which is teko, another key word that Sandra offers us, meaning “body-territory relationship.” As she says, “our whole existence is walking.”
And finally, as part of this journey, there are the challenges of institutional therapeutic transmutations. What transmutations are needed? How exactly can these worldviews, this listening together with ethical principles, reshape the futures of the arts, sciences and spiritualities? How can the practices of the healing arts and sciences, which are totally intertwined with the meaning of prayer, baths, blessings, songs, dances, and medicinal herbs, how can they (re)invent and transform the conventional museum as well as community health centers?
I’ll turn the conversation over to you, Sandra. Thank you very much.
Sandra Benites: Thank you too for the invitation. My interest and effort to be here with you today is to think about the future. How can we continue to face what we have been facing over the last four years?3
One thing that has really impacted me as a racialized body, as a woman, and mother, and here even more than what we have been already facing, is how are we going to dialogue or deconstruct what doesn’t make me feel good as a woman, as an indigenous woman in society? I began to understand this a long time ago, when I started teaching and I entered the academy in search of an answer. I taught Guarani children in Espírito Santo —I lived there from 2000 to 2015—but I found it very difficult to have the autonomy to teach what I felt is important to us. Because in our Guarani custom, for example, when girls have their first period, they go into retreat, a process that continues with each period. It is a practice of safeguarding. Because our mental health depends on this. Because just like in our bodies, this flow of blood moves, and it moves—as my grandmother used to say— from the finger, to the head, to the hair. So, we need to know how to deal with this, which is to look after our bodies during this period. And that’s why it’s very important that we protect ourselves, because during this period you can talk rubbish because you’re impatient and someone can upset you, and this can lead to things that impact your health. That’s why safeguarding, this time of a woman’s menstrual period is so important. So, we developed a curriculum, a project, something that we have the right to do for our Brazilian indigenous school. Here there are four principles that we have to respect: the school has to be differentiated, bilingual, community-based, and also specific. This will depend on each context, each village, each language, each community. So, we put together our political pedagogical project, our curriculum proposal developed specifically for the Guarani community in the municipality of Aracruz.
Returning to the girls, most of my students were between 10 and 13 years old, the age at which menstruation begins. They were studying with me and the community and I talked about it. When their first period arrives, their parents would come and tell me that they’re going to begin their period of safeguarding. That’s when the whole family gets involved. It’s a process of education that I call collective education. It’s not just for one person. For example, during this period the boys go to fetch herbs to wash their heads and give their sisters medicine. So, I gave the go-ahead and the girls were released. Then, I remember, the secretary, the head of the Department of Education, came to tell me that I had to prepare activities to send to the girls who were on home leave with their families. I had to give them homework, or something like that, to send to them every day to put in their journals. This made me very indignant, because it literally meant that what we teach at home, our Guarani education, is not valid for anything, as well as not being valid for the school. Then I realized how distorted things were. From this distortion I started to explore other questions related to women and mothers. Because it’s never separate, nothing is separate, everything is together! The question of custom, of how we make and learn things, of our values… All of this is going to be specific to this process of the journey that we talk about, which we call teko. Teko is our body-territory relationship. Something you must deal with all the time. Because the path, how we walk in the world, for us, implies serious rituals that we have to practice during the process of our existence, of existing in the world. This is complex.
So, I think what Juruá [what the Guarani call white people] education imposes and tells us how we have to mold ourselves is a process that makes us ill and fragile, where we do not understand what is happening to ourselves. For Brazilian Juruá there is this idea of borders. For us indigenous people, there are no borders, there is no “this is Paraguay, this is Brazil.” There is no such thing; there was no such thing. For us, the border is just a teko. What is a teko? A teko, as I said, is something that is being molded all the time, according to your experience, your journey, your understanding, and it also depends on what’s around you.
You see, often, even though you have a different way of thinking, the school has been molding you into a certain shape for such a long time that sometimes you can’t react and you have to submit to that violence, something we still experience today. This is my indignation, something I always take with me as a means to observe where I fit in and where I can’t fit in.
When we ask ourselves: where do you fit in? And why do you fit in? We quickly understand why we fit and why we don’t. So, I think this is a very important thing for us, for our empowerment. Because when you don’t fit in individually, it’s not just that you don’t fit in. Collectively, it doesn’t fit!
But to go back… I went into education, then I left and came to the city to study for a master’s degree. And on my journey, I had the opportunity to meet other people: Juruás and indigenous people. So together we went about making partnerships, something I also understood when I took part for the first time as a curator of an exhibition. I remember that when I joined as curator, I was given several texts to read to understand a little about my role as curator. I didn’t read them. I said I wasn’t going to, because I already was coming with a lot of demands, carrying them on my back as an indigenous woman, a woman, and also as a teacher. So, I focused on that, because it is exactly these apparatuses that will help me understand if I’m going to fit in here or not. So, I began working and then I began to understand a little. I think the institution still has a lot that needs to be broken down! Firstly, they say it’s the system, but the system is people… Yes, we’ve already resisted and lived through [many of these institutions], but we need to think about future generations. Because today we’re not going to break what’s already there, but it’s important to think about how we’re going to mobilize what’s there.
And when you’re fragile, you’ll cling to anything, even knowing that you don’t fit in, you end up having to cling to it! And on the one hand, that’s important, but on the other, you have to know how to get out once you’re inside. That’s the big question. Because when I started my master’s degree, I thought anthropology was the closest to my way of being, but in reality, it’s distant, as if it were something over there and you are here. So, I felt lost. And I had to fight for someone to listen to me. And sometimes, when you start being very quarrelsome, not everyone listens to you. That’s why you need to stick with others! I can’t cope on my own. Sometimes, when you stick with others, you can split your pain into several pieces.
For example, I’m going to tell you a story: In our Guarani custom, the tapir is an animal that has a very strong spirit. We are also part of the tapir and its history. When the men go to hunt the tapir, they then bring it to the community to share the meat. And the more you share the meat, the more you make the other person responsible for the hunt. And the piece of meat from the tapir is you-yourself! Sharing the tapir meat means making everyone responsible for the hunt and its related questions. How do you know when to hunt? When killing is only for necessity, not for other reasons.
So, I try to imagine this today when I discuss it with other people. I know that many people won’t fully understand what I’m saying, but I think it’s important to take this on board: this reflection on responsibility based on listening and on the other person. Because it’s a responsibility that I think is important for us to think about. For example, I don’t remember what month it was when I arrived here in Rio. I had been invited to speak at a seminar at UFF (Federal Fluminense University). I lived in Estácio, so I walked to catch the ferry across to UFF. When I arrived at Largo da Carioca, I saw that there was no-one there and I found that very strange. Because normally there’s a buzz of people… I thought it was strange when I got there and there was no-one there. Then I looked to one side and there was a bar full of people, all in suits, drinking beer. I walked along and started to feel my eyes burning… Grey smoke, a noise up ahead. And the next thing I knew, there was a demonstration in front of Alerj (Legislative Assembly of Rio de Janeiro). On one side, there were lots of people drinking beer, who didn’t give a damn, and on the other, something that really shocked me: young black people and wheelchair-bound teachers being dragged away, smoke bombs, and the people in the sound truck being attacked… It was a scene of war! I started crying. I arrived at UFF totally saddened. Because that’s what I mean… When you’re fragile, it’s hard to see what’s going on… Everyone should have been there! I learnt later that the demonstration was about improving teachers’ salaries, for the many retired teachers who were no longer being paid.
So, it seems that in the society we live in responsibility is separated, divided, everything is divided! And that’s very bad, that’s a disease! We prepare children from an early age to understand that sharing a piece of tapir meat is sacred, a responsibility that is collective. Seeing those scenes, I was very affected, I was totally depressed. Because in our community, I’m not saying that we don’t fight, but that, if it happens that one person fails, everyone goes to the meeting… We participate, everyone has their say: Why did you fail? Why did we fail? If someone has failed, we never put the blame on one person, because it’s the fault of the collective. So, let’s go together! We may fall and get hurt in the middle of one thing or the other, but we’ll get there… And certainly, we manage without leaving anyone behind.
The path for us, I think for all indigenous people, is an experiment that you try out. For us Guarani, there’s a path that already exists and we walk it, we walk it… But there comes a time when we reach a crossroads, where there’s a choice, after you’ve traveled through several things. We don’t force anyone to choose something, but this, this process of experimentation, of experiencing and knowing how to feel with the ear, we call hendu. Hendu means listening with the ear, listening with the body. Hendu is practice, it is lived experience. So, we don’t keep telling people, we don’t force anyone, especially us Guarani… But we try it out and, even if people choose the wrong path, we can deal with it collectively, the collective itself will deal with it.
Recently I spoke a lot with Cacique Babau (Chief Babau), a Tupinambá, who spoke about a violent act against a woman in his community and that the community had to banish the aggressor and get him out of there altogether. In order to remove a person who had committed such violence, everyone had to reach a consensus, including the family. And that’s not an easy task. Mothers cry, they’re sad, they say they’re not going to be well, and they’re not going to be healthy because of this. That’s why we give people the option of experimenting and trying things out long beforehand.
In our Guarani language there is the expression kuimba’e ete, which means a real man. Kuimba’e ete isn’t about biology, it’s about being… about the ability to demonstrate your role as a man. For example, listening, knowing how to listen, being tolerant, knowing how to look after your sister, knowing your own position and your own role in the community. And knowing when it’s important for a man to show his masculinity. When his sister isn’t well, he’ll know how to get the medicine, he’ll know how to get the right medicine. So, it’s a process, a whole process.
So, with all the difficulties we have in the community, we still manage to practice this. But it is the school that, instead of engaging in dialogue with us, prevents us from doing this, as if what’s important to us wasn’t content. That’s one of the things I wanted to bring up today…
But I also really want to listen. Because I think dialogue is also very important, to be listened to, to listen, this is about coming together. We have various people who have had journeys very different from mine, but it’s important that we unite around things, common issues. How can we, in practice, deconstruct what we want to deconstruct?
In relation to tembiapo, as Vergara has already mentioned, when I entered the world of art, that is the Juruá world of art, I was a little confused. I found myself not wanting to understand. I didn’t want to get into the game the way it is! Sometimes it seems to me that it’s romanticization itself: art in the art world is like something very incredible, something that has no pain, no steps, no effort, no depression… But for us, for indigenous people, we do it so we don’t have depression. I mean, art isn’t supposed to depress you, it’s the opposite, it’s supposed to keep you out of depression! Because here comes your desire, your strength, your resistance… It’s not meant to depress you, it’s the opposite: to strengthen you as an individual or as a collective. And it seems that the art world, artists, are often very depressed and very deluded too and when I saw what things were like, I said to myself: “What am I going to do here?”
This vision of Western art, which seems to be very wonderful…for a woman, a racialized body, you have to make even more of an effort… Sometimes you end up totally depressed, because no matter how much effort you make, you never get to where you’d like to go. That’s why I start from my understanding as a Guarani person and from how I can make things circulate, move, and not stand still, as if it were something that is finished… Because when you seek perfection, you can’t get there, and I can’t get sick now, I can’t!
So, I started asking my kinsfolk: “What is art?” How do they understand what the Juruá call art? They said: “In our understanding it’s something else… It would be tembiapo.” Juruá think that tembi is something you have, but tembi for us is your relationship. Hunting is also tembi: what you are in quest of, but it’s not easy to be on such a quest, to be on the hunt, you have a responsibility towards what you hunt, you have feelings about what you hunt. Tembi… it’s something that mobilizes. Apo, for us Guarani, means hand. And djapo is the hand that mobilizes, it’s doing something with the hand. So, I put this together to be able to translate what I think art is; it’s the relationship between your own body and your individual abilities, what you can do. For example, I don’t know how to make baskets, but there are other women who do. There are many young Guarani people who know how to carve little animals, but others don’t.
I remember Xadalu Jupã Jekupé, a so-called mestizo artist from Rio Grande do Sul. He did a piece that I found incredible: he put bulletproof vests on people, on his kinsfolk. Because in Rio Grande do Sul there were some of them who were occupying a territory. The police went to remove them by force, with guns and everything, and said that if they didn’t leave, they were going to die. Xadalu didn’t move, didn’t get scared, and said that they could shoot him, right there, in front of everyone: “You can kill my body, but you’ll never kill my spirit”. After that, he made a picture of his people wearing bulletproof vests.
So, art, as I see it, is a relationship. The artist is the individual who has the ability to manipulate things, to create things. So, automatically, art and artists already have a relationship, a tembiapo. When you make a work of art or an object that you turn into art, it can’t just sit there, be forgotten… It has to be moved around all the time! That is, both the objects that were produced and why they were produced in order to continue to have meaning. If we make an artwork and leave it idle, as is often the case, the Guarani call it a dead memory. I thought a lot about trying to translate tembiapo. Because there’s this idea that translating is also a betrayal.4 As [the anthropologist] Eduardo Viveiros de Castro says: “You have to think very carefully about who you betray.” That’s why I contend that in order to think about the future for future generations, it’s important that we can walk together. Walking together doesn’t mean that everyone thinks the same way, but rather gets to know each other’s limitations and steps… Knowing your own boundaries… Knowing who is who… Another issue that is also very difficult for me is the thesis I’m working on. How to materialize it, not just in the format of a text? My grandmother used to say that a written text is a dead memory. That’s why we need to add to it, top it up all the time.
Anyway, I think that’s it, I don’t know if anyone wants to make a comment.
Iê Carvalho Rizzo: Just a quick comment. You spoke about books, about writing being a dead memory, and I was reminded of a conversation at a bar the other day after a talk organized by Selvagem.5 One person said that he remembered an indigenous person (I don’t remember the ethnicity) saying that they see books as a kind of ambition to absorb wisdom very quickly, something that is overly anxious to acquire wisdom, and that they believe that even if you didn’t have access to those books, this wisdom would reach you, that it would arrive somehow, and that the word “I don’t know” or the expression “I don’t understand” doesn’t exist in their culture, because they believe that wisdom will always arrive somehow.
Guilherme: It’s interesting that you bring up this relationship of time, where learning is rather a thickened time, one wisdom after another…
Sandra: Yes. I think here I can talk a little about my experience at the Museum of Indigenous Cultures in São Paulo. I’ve been there for two or three months now. I used to live in Rio but when I was invited by the museum I moved. We’ve just begun to do some activities… One of the activities we did last month was with Michele Guarani Kaiowá, a young filmmaker, who talked about the work she did during the pandemic with women. These women are teaching their children not to forget medicinal plants. In the video, they say that this pandemic is the disease of our time and that if we don’t fight for the life of the land, we won’t exist anymore. Plants are what heal us, that’s why young people need to go to the marsh to look at plants. So, they started taking their children to the marsh to show them how to remove the plants. They can be useful for menstruation, also there’s a plant that is a contraceptive, but it’s not just anywhere that this plant exists, it exists only in the marsh.
So, when we think about this idea of body-territory, our own body is the very ground we walk on. I talked about this a little in my master’s thesis. Because for us indigenous people, especially the Guarani, mothers always teach girls to tread lightly on the ground. I mean, it’s delicate and this sensibility, I think it is also a kind of crying…
This reminds me of a project I did with researchers for SESC.6 I think it was in 2018. We did a workshop in João Pessoa on memory. A relative of mine once said that when we listen to older people talking about the importance of practicing a certain ritual, we are waking up our memory. And when you wake up your memory, you start to see what’s important and what’s not. And from there, you can build other paths…or as Juruá might say, you make an agreement with your memory.7 If you don’t come to terms with your memory, you start to become fragile, you become depressed, sad… So, we did this workshop, with various teachers and artists who took part with us, we created things. And at the end there was a lot of crying… Many people cried remembering sad things. And most of them blamed themselves for crying. I found that very strange. Because how is it that the institutions themselves, whether university or museum, repress you as a human being, repress your feelings, as if you couldn’t cry. Aren’t you human? I went through a lot when I became a teacher… I couldn’t talk about my period anymore because I’m working as a teacher. But I haven’t stopped being Guarani! The system violates you in a way so that you are forced to practice what is not yours. So, I stopped being a Guarani woman in order to enter this system.
Recently Clarissa Diniz, someone I’ve worked with on various curatorial projects, a partner in many endeavors, told me that she’d never thought about it, that she’d already repressed so many feelings. It is as if we have to face things in a way that you can’t be sensitive, you can’t cry. So, I think this is another kind of violence against our humanity, and there’s no dialogue about it. And I said to the people in the workshop: it’s OK. It’s through our crying that we can really feel, really listen with our bodies. And it seemed to be a relief for everyone. I think it’s the system that imposes this idea of repressing feelings. And then, very often, your sensibility becomes rage. And that’s another illness.
So, everything I say, I bring from my own experience of understanding. Sometimes I’ve said something, then I rethink it… We all have the right to revise statements that were wrong in the past. That’s no problem for us. But it’s important to always have the creativity to rethink! It’s important to want to go back and take other paths. Another episode I’d like to bring up is the way we work out what is organized and what is not organized. It depends on your point of view. That’s why teko (body-territory relation) is a way of being in the world, of living, of seeing things, the way you walk… Teko is individual, but it’s also the relationship with our surroundings. The violence that a person has experienced is not the individual person’s, it’s the relationship with the surroundings.
Returning to this relationship as part of the idea of art. As I see it, art is a kind of knowledge that each community, each people, and each individual puts together. Because we are made of relationships as well as being individuals. But the individual is not totally alone in the world, there are various other relationships that we bring together to create and feel less pain, to make us happy.
So, tekoa means where this teko is produced collectively, which is why it’s very important to listen, to dialogue, to come together to listen, for everyone to express their way of thinking. There is this challenge of not being able to reconcile all the tekos, which is why listening is very important, so that we can walk together respecting differences. Everyone’s well-being— listening, dialogue, understanding—this teko porã rã is the way to be well in the future.
Food is an example of this: one of the things that I find incredible, that affects us in its diversity, is food. There are people who like polenta, I like this, I like that, I like feijoada… But we don’t know how this feijoada came about, whose hands made it and why this feijoada came about… I love torresmo (pork crackling), for example, and nowadays I eat torresmo as if it were a privilege, but there were times when it wasn’t a privilege, someone made it out of creative necessity.
And this is something that we let die. Actually, it doesn’t die, but it goes dormant: we don’t talk, we don’t dialogue, we don’t admire, we don’t know who created this crackling, how was it created? And this is a way of interacting with others: interacting through art! We can admire others through this interaction and also be admired. It’s like a dodge dance.
It is through art, as I see it, that you can touch the other with your beauty. And not only beauty, but also your provocation. I say provocation because we won’t find each other by fighting. So, when there’s a dance, a ritual, it’s very beautiful, but it is also political. A form of politics that is very important for us to understand, because there are rules there that enable you to enter. You can’t just walk in. And it’s in this way that you can then admire it!
And I think that the hendu, as I see it, is art itself. The art that makes us be heard! Pain too. Because as I said, I didn’t know anyone there at Alerj that day, but I saw people getting pepper sprayed in the face and that affected me a lot. I kept thinking about the women, because for us Guarani, older women, who have worked a lot, are very important! Because they have the experience of a living memory that can teach us the paths we need to forge. And at the time, I saw a lady being dragged away by these young people who were also there fighting… She was being dragged away so that she wouldn’t die because of the bomb. And this is a terrible repression that affected me greatly, regardless of who these women were or who these young people were. So, through my sensibility, my creativity, I was able to understand this. I don’t know if I’ve said some things in line with what was asked, but anyway. Does anyone else want to speak?
Guilherme: Sandra, it’s great to listen to you. Let’s keep “thinking roundly.” Any questions or comments?
Noite Luz: Let me organize my thoughts a little. This whole question of how art… I’ve always drawn since I was a child and during this semester, I realized that it has been my escape, my search for art—drawing, dancing, performing, creating in itself—has been precisely a way of dealing with depression, trauma, things I really repressed.
So, I was able to see how much art saved me, not completely because I still have sequelae and disorders that came from these traumas, but without this art, without treatments, without medical care from psychologists, psychiatrists, I wouldn’t have been able to survive the way I did. What you’re saying really touches me. Because art is very important and art can save you a lot when you can’t find yourself. When I had this realization, I stopped to look through all my notebooks and saw everything with new eyes, where I saw that every character I drew, every poem I wrote, was questioning who I was and what was happening. It was me, trying to stop repressing everything I’d been feeling all my life.
And I think it’s increasingly important that we encourage art more, especially with children so that they can express themselves and try to listen to what they’re feeling, because often they’re not encouraged to do this, we hear things all our lives like swallow your tears, you’re exaggerating, it’s nothing, you’re making things up in your head, and that’s not the case. Everything you’re talking about is extremely important.
Thelma Vilas Boas: Good afternoon, so nice to see you in person. This “round” conversation reminded me of an adinkra, the Sankofa, which is when a bird looks at its tail and turns its beak backwards, meaning that there is no taboo in looking back and collecting what has been lost. Listening to you, my effort to come here today to meet you, and to listen to you on the wheel of life, is also in the hope that your wisdom will make us collect what has been lost, and that, without taboo, without that prepotency of what constitutes us as a hegemonic society, not just in Brazil, but in the world, we can seek out what we have lost. And it’s curious, because looking back is at the same time looking forwards and looking back for the “home” that we have lost but that we will find ahead. And then the conversation becomes “round” again, because time really is circular, isn’t it… So… it’s always like that… funny how we’re embarrassed to talk about it… What an age for us to live through! And while I listen to you, my mind flies to find meanings and significance for so many things we’re trying to find.
But I think it’s very important to recognize responsibility for the moment we find ourselves in… then again, a whirlwind, which makes us lose where to look… to recognize that this conversation, round and round, is also because we’ve lost some thread out there.
Zíngara: I think what’s happening here is very powerful, because it’s so much bigger, we’re not talking just about art, it’s so much deeper. Today our society needs to find itself, a place to reconnect with the things that matter, like food, and what we’re doing, proposing to speak out and so on. So, it’s moving, you know, because we’ve really lost a lot of things like that, and I’m very emotional because I’m pregnant and it’s very difficult, you know? Talking about the things we hear as children, I think we have to remember that our mums and dads are dealing with a lot of things, a lot of demands. When you’re talking about women, and I’m now in this position of being a pregnant woman, there really are a lot of demands. It’s a lot of effort and sometimes it is more mental effort that is demanded of us.
The weight I feel today in my body as it works to create a human being is even less than in my head, as I’m going to be a mother. And honestly, as much as I love the guy who’s going to be the father, I know that he’s not going through a process as intensely as I am, you know? And because, as you said, we’ve lost this place where mothers teach their children to be sensitive to tread lightly on the ground.
Listening is very complex. So many things are separate, how can you understand that they are interconnected? It’s a lot of work. I think providing places where we can do what we’re doing here is greater than we can imagine. Listening to you today, I don’t know how to measure its potential, because it’s so very, very, necessary, it’s what you said about us finding a common place, also because of the pain, you know? The marvelous thing I’m experiencing, that’s also very challenging, it’s very crazy, waking up one day and knowing that you’re giving birth to a human being and all the other things we have to manage. Because, that’s what you said, we materialize what we need to say. My art becomes about everything, about how I’m managing money, how to think about this child, how to think about this creation… Art is really just the fragment that this society has found to connect with something that is so basic. What we’re talking about here, listening, exchange, listening to our elders, food, all of this is so basic, but it’s so lost without making these links. For me today is a gift… so basic, yet so complex, full of things to unfold… Thank you so much.
Martha Niklaus: It’s great you’re saying this! [Speaking to the previous speaker]. This desire for collectivity, to be together, to be able to participate together in an event of yours, this is so welcoming, it brings belonging and strengthens you, very cool. Thanks for sharing.
So, Sandra, I wanted to bring up a question that I was curious about, because you’re setting up a museum, aren’t you? You’ve been at an indigenous museum in São Paulo for two months, haven’t you?
Sandra: Yes, the Museum of Indigenous Cultures is an institution run by ACAM Portinari (Cultural Association for the Support of the Casa de Portinari Museum) in partnership with the Maracá Institute, which aims to protect, disseminate, and valorize indigenous cultural heritage The institution was created by the indigenous people of São Paulo themselves. I was asked to be part of the curatorial team, a curatorship that isn’t just mine, it’s collective. We discuss and dialogue with kinsfolk and the institution all the time. We are putting together a museum, but one that isn’t a stagnant museum like other museums.
Martha: Because the museum we’re used to is a museum that wants to keep things so that they can be perpetuated; perpetuated in the form of collections and objects to be kept for posterity. So how do you and your culture perceive this kind of relationship with memory? I don’t think there is a museum of Guarani culture, is there? What would a Guarani museum be like? Where would it be located? How as an indigenous woman do you work within an institutional structure with all the characteristics of a museum and a collection? When you say “the object has to be active” how does this work within this context? How do you transport your culture into an institutionalized space? I am very curious about that.
Isabela Santilli: Sandra, it is so great to listen to you. I also share this feeling of potential here today that others have mentioned. I come from the health field and have a degree in psychology. Listening to you about other ways of providing care are important for me to listen to and for all of us to collectively listen to, so that we can rethink and live our mental health care in other ways. Because coming from this area of health, I see a lot of similarities with what you said about the public school system: how the Western school system doesn’t understand, can’t conceive of the education that takes place in the village and how much the knowledge of psychology, health, and medicine, for example, still hasn’t incorporated and/or denies indigenous ways of producing care that include the collective or notions of territory. This treading lightly on the ground, going back to the marsh to look at the plants, the need to shift the blame, the ways of resolving issues collectively, art as a resource to avoid depression… These are like guideposts that I’ve been jotting down here. So, I’d like to thank you because you’ve brought a lot of elements that teach us to think about other kinds of health paths. Relationships that, like tembi, can help us to take care of ourselves and survive in this world that is making us sick in different ways all the time. Thank you.
Anita Sobar: As a circular conversation, I thought it would be interesting to speak from the center of our circle here today. I think that this way we can collectively commune with all the energies here. First of all, I’d like to thank you very much for your speech, it only reinforces the way I think about art. It’s very important nowadays, especially knowing the macro political conditions in which we live. Here we’re talking about micro-politics and how we can’t allow ourselves to avoid dealing with the affects that move us. Things that you have brought up a lot. I recently made a note of a text from the book O mundo em mim by the indigenous researcher João Lima Barreto, where he recounts, when he was little: “my father talked about the importance of a social unit, as well as how I was part of the unit I belonged to, that is, this social unit also thinks of me within the unit I belong to.” I see it as a bit similar to what that you are talking about here, not just theory, but a practice that goes hand in hand with it and that one thing that can’t be without the other. You talked about how the system represses, about how we put together things, relationships from within our shells, sieves and hems of this very interesting discipline that I’ve had the opportunity to participate in with great effort to try and get out of my depression. We need to understand this too, because art isn’t always about catching a glimpse of marvelous things, it’s also a process; a process that involves being connected, being in a relationship and also allowing yourself to be impacted, and this impact is often not a comfortable place, you have to take risks being an artist, being an artist means taking risks. It’s also thinking about webs, collectivities of lived experiences, thinking about these webs, it’s about fabulating, about working together, about building in order to breathe. Lately I’ve been doing a series called Folego (Breath) because it’s hard to breathe.
I recently read an article that talks about remaking bodies and sculpting affections, that also deals with shards, you talked about fragments. And like my colleague, what’s your name, Zingara? Mine is Anita, I don’t know if I introduced myself. I also wanted to bring motherhood to the center of this circle. Because you spoke about the school, you spoke about the child, the importance of not letting them succumb, and motherhood. Often as women we put ourselves in a very difficult place, because as well as being women, we are mothers. So, we’re triply-charged and have to make an even greater effort to appear that everything is fine, that we are like men within this heteronormative society. But that’s not true, we need to share and sharing is also sharing love, we need to share love between each other, so that there are no more open doors to fascism. That’s what I wanted to say in thanks for your talk.
Sandra: I wanted to share with you all, echoing what you have been sharing here in this conversation, that I think art is exactly our resistance to depression. I have repressed things and I think that when we look at ourselves and allow ourselves to feel our pain, we end up being creative. So, it’s not that we don’t suffer, we do, I think that’s why we end up being very creative. I see a lot of creativity existing, resisting and even though there are other very difficult issues, we’re seeing a lot of unemployed parents, a lot of people going through difficulties, a lot of hunger, which saddens us, but we need to resist and carry on.
And going back a bit, I think you said something about the question of resistance, you said “I resisted.” I think that’s the way forward, art brings us this ability to “resist”, to strengthen ourselves, not that we’re going to resolve all our emotions, but we can start resisting and putting things together. So, I think that’s what I do myself, and this idea of what you also said about memory, the metaphor of looking back at the tail, I remember there was a Pataxó teacher who used this metaphor of the bow and arrow, saying the further back we pull back, the further we will go.
So, memory, waking up your memory, looking back means that, it means you have to go further, because otherwise, if you erase your memory, you won’t be able to find your way forward. So, I think that the idea of us submitting to colonization, all this apparatus that stops us, that leaves us with our hands tied, is exactly why we have arrived at this moment, where we have to struggle against others who should be with us. But this is a process, I think that’s why we’re human. A lot of people have asked me if I’m angry, it’s not to say I’m not angry, I’m angry, but I have to resist and create other ways not to get sick, because anger can make you sick.
There are several narratives that are very interesting in our Guarani custom. For example, when the world came into being, Nhanderu [Guarani creator and first father] gave birth to a woman, a mother, Nhandesy. Then she was devoured by jaguars and her children were orphaned. At the end of the story, these two children who were orphaned, tried to take revenge on the enemy who devoured their mother, but they didn’t succeed. So, in our Guarani custom, in order for us to devour our enemies, you have to know how to dance, how to dodge, otherwise you won’t be able to face them, you won’t know the code. Something you have to use a lot, which also causes pain and conflict. We have to know how to restrain our conflicts in order to go further and begin to isolate what we need to banish from our midst, as Cacique Babau said. We have to ally ourselves with the parents of the offender, so that they too can come to a consensus to banish that person, which is one way of resolving things. That’s our way. Is it easy? It’s not, it’s very painful, it’s very sad, but we embrace it as a collective and not just as an individual, so it has a greater impact. So, I think it’s a bit like that when we talk about memory.
Then there’s the story of a teacher who said that he was once teaching kindergarten and was called “disorganized.” He was a teacher from Rio Grande do Sul. He said that as part of Guarani custom when it rains, they let the children play the way they want to play. This is why there is also another school building. The main building can’t accommodate us the way we are and the children can’t adjust either. So, they made another little house next door so that when it rains the children could stay there. They started to play, each one lying down, one would make the other lie on the table, and they started drawing. The teacher was stimulating the children’s creativity. Each one did what they wanted, you have to do that, don’t repress the children’s feelings, that’s a very sad thing for us. But, of course, there’s an adult there to supervise, so they don’t get hurt, not to control them, controlling them is ugly, to guide them, to guide them so they don’t fall over. So, he was just watching the children. Then he said that the coordinator came in and drew his attention to the fact that his classroom was disorganized.
I think that when we proceed, walk, start walking together, collectively, we will be disorganized from the point of view of those who are repressing us, who have left us with our hands tied. So, this will be disorganized, not the “disorganized” of the repressor looking on, but because we are diverse, with different thoughts, different trajectories, each one has their own creativity. I know how to make a collage, but I don’t know how to make a basket. So, these issues are going to be disorganized from the point of view of what we already have and from what has already been dominating us.
I think to respond to the question of the collection, which I found very interesting, we will have a collection in our museum. It is being born. It’s funny to talk about birth, because the museum started in a mad frenzy to be born, then nine months later the museum was born. So, I mean, indigenous kinsfolk started giving birth to the museum and now we’re starting to work on it, and there are lots of disagreements, disorganized meetings, and various other things. But we’re learning a lot from it. There’s going to be a collection, we have a curatorial group already in place, we are putting together a staff of researchers, so it’s starting to come into place. One of the things we’ve already started to do is a series of activities, because the state requires it. They say all the time “do this, do that”, and we have to comply with these rules…
Another thing I found interesting is that the majority of the indigenous folk, firstly those who are there accompanying the exhibition are called masters of knowledge, they are not educators, they are masters of knowledge, and they are part of the exhibition as educational mediators. The educational mediators are masters of knowledge. And they will take turns little by little, every six months they will take turns. There are young people, older researchers, as well as indigenous people there, they’re taking turns and it’s an exchange. I found it very interesting because it seems that this space in the museum is being molded to facilitate encounters between different indigenous peoples and non-indigenous peoples. This format is already happening, kinsfolk meeting kinsfolk, which is what I’m talking about, kinsfolk from the city and the village. I found it very interesting that the exhibition started like this. Xadalu is an indigenous artist, but he identifies himself as a mestizo, he says that his DNA is marginalized. Other indigenous people taking part in this inaugural moment include Denilson Baniwa, who most of you know as an artist, who is a Baniwa from Rio Negro. So, the exhibition has begun more or less like this, and so when the program that the state itself demands comes along, we can start adapting it to bring in people from the village to prepare for Elderly People’s Day, for example. I found it very interesting that we brought in elderly and non-elderly indigenous people, as well as a researcher who talks about the importance of the elderly. They also gave talks aimed at Juruá people explaining why the elderly are important, their own relatives. So, we’re adapting as we go.
Guilherme: Is the exhibition accessible online so that people can access it?
Sandra: There’s a website: Museum of Indigenous Cultures.
Many of the kinsfolk call the museum a house of prayer, as if it were a house of prayer. It’s very peaceful when you go there, you can sit down and there are lots of little stools carved in the shape of animals where you can sit and reflect. It’s very pleasant to stay there. They transformed it, for example, for pink October, based on a demand from the state. We brought in people who work with indigenous health and also women from the village and kinswomen not from the village to discuss what access they have to health issues. I found this very interesting. There was a team of doctors that gave a workshop, explaining and talking about the difficulties women have, and also talking about territory. And I found all this very interesting, having this health team explaining the cause of breast cancer, for example, or uterine cancer. They said that they have done a lot of research and that today it seems that the cancer that most affects indigenous women is uterine cancer, not breast cancer. I found this very interesting because the women started talking, they talked about how they eat in the city, the “dead” food they’re eating. They said that everything is artificial and talked about how much chemical food we eat. And then we went back to the importance of demarcating land for indigenous people, quilombolas, traditional communities, and many others. I remember an indigenous relative that gave a talk. He said that these communities that live and have a direct relationship with the land serve as a shield from violence to protect things and that the Juruá, who live in the city, need to understand that we are a shield, not only as indigenous people, but also as quilombolas, traditional communities, fishermen, shellfish gatherers, and many others, who have always lived as a shield. I found it very interesting that he talked about this. We keep doing things like this there. There have been masters of knowledge. The Guarani masters went there too, they prayed and brought this as a way to strengthen what we are doing and said that: “The museum was baptized”. So, it wasn’t us who said it. The masters said “It has to be baptized by us.” And then they began to question some things, including some drawings, and I think that listening is very important. In the museum building there’s a huge antenna on the seventh floor, and on one side there’s an image of a jaguar and on the other there’s still no image. So, they’re discussing what we are going to do there and the presence of the jaguar. For the Guarani, the jaguar has a very strong spiritual meaning, for other indigenous peoples it doesn’t, but they said that the jaguar is a very strong protector and it’s not just anywhere that we put the image of the jaguar. I found this discussion very interesting, and we’re going to continue to discuss it. So, these things will expand and we’ll call on various people. But this also takes time. For example, we just started working on the Guarani exhibition in Jaraguá, but we haven’t had enough time to discuss all the issues yet. But the idea is always to have exhibitions, and that they will continue, but it will be very much along the lines of listening, adding, expanding which is infinite, there will be no definitions.
But back to the question of pregnancy raise by the pregnant speaker. I also spoke about this when we were having lunch. I said that in our language there is no word for balance, what we have in our language is imbalance. So why did this imbalance happen? Because from pregnancy onwards, according to our Guarani narrative, Nhandesy and Nhanderu are different places, Nhandesy is the ground itself, the earth itself, and Nhanderu is ywateguá, which we call the above. It is said that when they began to meet to gestate mother earth, to gestate the earth, it is said that the gestation began without Nhandesy’s consent, it was rather a seduction. That’s why everything for us in our language, for example, is wai, which is what is in excess, so what is in excess? Waipá is also good, but it’s also bad. The same word is used for two things, so it depends on the excess, the practice of excess. According to the women, it’s the women who tell it, the men tell it differently, that’s why there are different versions. So, they say that when Nhanderu came to earth, Nhandesy didn’t know that he couldn’t stay on earth and would have to go back, and when he came back after Nhandesy got pregnant, he went back to the amba (heavenly abode), which is the place we call ywateguá. This is a spirit, not a body. And we women say that we are bodies, flesh, which is why the earth is our body. And since Nhandesy couldn’t move to live with Nhanderu, or Nhanderu couldn’t live here, there were these misunderstandings, there was this friction between Nhanderu and Nhandesy. So, for us there are no balanced things, there is imbalance. So, when we start to think about something, we have to think about the imbalance in order to balance it. This is a process, this is a struggle, it’s a way, each person has to understand, so our imbalance, what we call tekoa hasy. means imperfect beings. We are imperfect beings. So, we build things, we try to balance things and the world, we try to be in balance. And it seems that in the world of the Juruá vision, it’s as if things are already balanced, that there’s nothing more to discuss. I think this can leave us deluded where it seems we aren’t capable of understanding ourselves. So, at every opportunity, [we need to be aware of this] when dealing with the institutions we have recourse to, I’m not saying they are all bad, but I’m saying it’s important for us to understand. In my case, I liked having studied at the National Museum, having done anthropology, I like it and I’m still doing it, but I don’t play the game. I know where and when I’m going in and when I’m going out. I think it’s totally a game.
Coming back to this idea of imbalance, I think it’s a bit like what you all said. I’d like to mention the case of my son, who went to university at UFES Santa Catarina (Federal University of Espírito Santo) to study environmental engineering. But six months later he rang me to say that he didn’t want to study any more, that he wasn’t keeping up with his classmates, especially in physics and chemistry. He claimed that if he studied at a private university, he would be able to keep up with his other classmates. Look at the distortion!
I said, “Come on, son, let’s sit down and talk.” I explained that he couldn’t practice certain things that we [in our ancestral traditions had] practiced, because we lived in Aracruz, where there was only eucalyptus, nothing else. How am I going to continue teaching indigenous traditions to my son if there’s only eucalyptus trees, there’s no river, there’s no birds, there’s nothing else. So, for me the idea was just to go to school every day and do the things that were part of my job, and what wasn’t my job, I wouldn’t be able to do. So, then I explained to him, “Look, son, here’s the thing”, I said, “it’s the university that doesn’t know how to welcome you, get that into your head.” I said: “Firstly, we practice physics and chemistry every day, the method of understanding, comprehending and practicing physics and chemistry, we live it all the time, we carry it on our backs, but nobody has asked you if you know this, why is that you should you understand chemistry and physics of Juruá customs taught at the University. This is wrong.”
Then I started explaining it to him. Our method of physics and chemistry is what we do all the time as a ritual. When we go to kill a tapir, to hunt a tapir, we do a ritual to ask the spirit of the tapirs. How do we go to the spirit of the forest to ask permission to take a leaf? We look at which side we’re going to take the bark from, and then the next month, if we need it again, we think about which bark we’re going to take, where we’re going to take it from, which moon we’re going to take it from. All of this has to do with our knowledge, and if there’s no more forest, no more river, no more marshes, there’s only eucalyptus. Unfortunately, at the time he was studying at school there was only eucalyptus there in Aracruz. So, I had to explain all that for him to understand so he could become stronger again, to understand, so that he wouldn’t blame himself, think he was incompetent or that he wouldn’t be able to carry on studying.
So, I think that when we deal with what the Juruá call culture and art, I would rather call them know-hows, not culture, but knowledge, the knowledge of a people, or a group, or an individual. It’s knowledge. And that’s why it’s very important that we know how to keep this knowledge a secret and when to talk about our knowledge. In the case of this university, it needs to be talked about because they’re not respecting other knowledges and are not even aware that such other knowledge exists. How do we become inclusive in these places where we don’t know the other? So, reflecting on these questions I began to really look at this knowledge, I don’t know if I’d call it art, I don’t know if I’d call it culture, I’d call it, at least for me it seems better to say something like know-hows, knowledge, understanding. I don’t know what we’d call it, there are others who don’t agree with calling it science. In my language, there’s another way, another logic of speaking, which is arandu [knowledge]. It’s also doing. It’s a process, it’s not something ready-made. Arandu is also conquered, it’s not something that’s given, but conquered. So, for example, arandu is someone who knows how to facilitate rituals. Anyone who knows a bark that is good for reducing blood flow is an arandu. It’s a quest that you have to seek. In the same way, tembia is like hunting.
I think there are many things that we don’t discuss. For example, we can’t bring the knowledge of the midwives, we can’t bring it to the museum. Then I realized that this knowledge is a heritage that we need to continue to maintain. This is a heritage that doesn’t fit in the museum, but it’s important to talk about it. So, we called in some researchers to talk about the importance of continuing this heritage. I think these are the paths that we travel and they are always conflicting, and painful too, and sometimes you don’t fit in a certain place, when you’re seen as a militant, for example, when you’re a militant for the cause you’re often not even seen as an artist, but sometimes they see you as problematic people.
I’ve been there too. And I guess to wrap up my talk, I’d really like to keep to the time we planned, I know you all have time commitments and need to leave too. But what I’d like to say is that I think that from everything we’ve talked about, you all need to carry a little bit of everything, not just as an artist, not just as a teacher, not just as an intellectual, but a form of resistance. For example, I’m Guarani, when I lived in the village, I had a different way of thinking and seeing things, and after I came to the city, I started to broaden my way of seeing, because of various experiences, and often when I arrive in the village, I’m also a stranger, I’m not that Sandra anymore. And then I see myself, I think we all do, we see ourselves in this place, it’s just that we don’t have a place sometimes, we’re here between things, you know? It feels like there are two walls. You’re on this side, then sometimes you’re on the other, but I think that’s our journey. Because sometimes you don’t fit anywhere, or sometimes you fit in two, that’s a very difficult task too, it’s conflicting, but it’s important that we really know how to embrace each other. Regardless of the form, we call someone who commits to or lives in the same way or who suffers the same thing as we do, “one of ours.”
For example, the black movement is “one of ours.” They’re not part of our kinsfolk, but they live like “one of ours.” They’re in the same situation as us. I’m talking about forms of struggle, of resistance, of violence, and the attacks that we suffer. And I think that gives me a lot of strength, I’m not saying that I’m always strong. When I left MASP, because I had to cancel an exhibition, it left me depressed, it messed with me, I was really shaken. Because when you think about the collective, sometimes you’re in a very difficult place, you have your singularity, which is you, your individuality, and there are also others who are there and you have to decide for them. So, I made the decision, when MASP decided not to put up a photograph of the MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais sem Terra /Landless Workers’ Movement), I said “I won’t play with that.” Because MST is “one of ours” too. So, I couldn’t, even though I knew I wouldn’t have the money to pay rent and other things, I think I had to make that decision and it was very hard for me, it was difficult. Not for me, leaving MASP, but for the other artists who trusted us. But I’m glad they reversed their decision, we sorted it out, and the exhibition happened, it turned out the way we wanted, but it was very stressful, it was something that was bound to affect us.
So, I think that being an artist, a curator, a teacher, an activist, an intellectual, things aren’t always marvelous, I think this is also a bit of a trap, remembering what happened with [the indigenous artist] Jaider [Esbel], for example. [His suicide] really affected me, because he’s an artist I knew. He was a great reference for me, in terms of thinking, of thinking about things in the art world, and I remember that before he made this passage, he sent me an audio and said that he wanted to talk to me humanly. That will stay with me forever, him saying that.
I think our humanity is important. Sometimes we fail to activate our humanity, to accept our humanity, regardless of who we are. I think I learnt this a lot, my grandmother used to say this to me, she said don’t expect anyone to embrace you. I mean, don’t expect the world to embrace you because the world is diverse, you have to learn to embrace the world. So, when we learn to embrace the world, even with our conflicts, we manage to walk along various paths, make turns, stumble, and pass over various other things, so that you don’t get hurt, so that we can take it in our stride. I think this has also made me the person I am, someone who doesn’t carry guilt. I do sometimes feel guilty about some things in relation to my children and such things, but it’s not a guilt that is difficult to carry, that makes us ill, that we can’t discuss. So, I don’t think there’s guilt, there’s misunderstanding, but that’s not your fault, it’s a lot of other things. For there are things that are up to you and there are things that aren’t, for example. I wanted my son to learn to practice certain rituals, but there were no more plants, there was nothing else, there was no river, we drank tap water, so how can I blame myself for that? But I can fight for them, I can talk about my concerns.
So, I think that’s it, at least for me, I’m very happy to have spoken here to you today. I also brought [indigenous] necklaces that I was going to display but I ended up forgetting. But if you want to see them, they’re with me and I can display them. So that’s it. Thank you very, very much, I’m very happy, it’s been very liberating to talk like this. And you should continue doing this, without me, and with me, and other people can also contribute. One option would also be to bring in a person with the ability to play a sound that has a history, an essence, a body of practice, and an origin. We need to dream about this too. I remember that the Maracá Institute, that Cristine Takuá, São Paulo’s Secretary of Education, founded and advises, as well as the Guarani leadership there, dreamt a lot about the museum. But there are several museums and there are other museums that we call an extension of the museum, and there are many of the kinsfolk who say: “We want to do our museum our way.” They said that they were going to make the museum, they weren’t going to put any collections in it, but that it could attract several others, as if it were a school for teaching other people who don’t know about Guarani or other Kaingang peoples [a linguistic group of indigenous peoples].
They also said that this teaching isn’t really the Juruá way of coming in and imposing things, teaching is sharing your pain, your songs, your food. So, I found this very interesting, it’s a collective way of embracing each other. But each one offers what they have to the other, I think that’s the process of teaching, it’s teaching yourself, teaching that’s not just one thing, but several movements. So, let’s see, they’re saying they’re going to make a museum, they’re already making a house, they’re building it themselves, for example, Jaraguá is already building a trail, it’s their way of building a museum, they’re building a trail, they’re breeding stingless bees and various other things. So that’s the museum they want. That’s it, thank you very much.
Jessica: Thank you so much Sandra for speaking and listening so thought-provokingly and generously. Many thanks as well to Lígia, Marília and the Companhia de Mystérios e Novidades, and to everyone here for coming.
Sandra: I’d like to invite everyone another time, if I come back here again, to talk about what you’re creating.
Guilherme: Yes, of course. I’d like to emphasize my gratitude as well and also note how impressive it was that in this “round” conversation, which is a spiral conversation, we tackled all the issues that were thought important as initial cartography of ideas. Thank you all very much!
Sandra: Can I display the necklaces over there?
Jessica: Of course!
***
Luiz Guilherme Vergara is an associate professor in the art department and a member of the Graduate Program in Contemporary Studies of the Arts at the Fluminense Federal University (UFF). He was coordinator of the undergraduate course in arts (2019-2024) and director of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) in Niterói 2005-2008 and 2013-2016. He coordinates the research group (CNPq) ynterfluxes – contemporary art, community, and nature.
Sandra Benites is the Director of Visual Arts at FUNARTE. [National Brazilian Foundation of the Arts]. She is an educator, researcher, and curator. She is a descendant of the Guarani Nhandewa people. She holds a Master’s degree in Social Anthropology from the Museu Nacional-UFRJ and is a PhD candidate in the same program. Her research and work have focused on the particularities of the arts and lives of indigenous communities, pointing to the need for counter-colonial changes in institutions, museums, and exhibitions, and the care for the particularities of different peoples, ethnicities, and cultures. She was the curator of the exhibition Dja guata Porã | Rio De Janeiro Indígena at the Museu de Arte do Rio de Janeiro (2017) and also part of the curatorial team of the Museu das Culturas Indígenas which opened in São Paulo in 2022.
1 In 2023 Sandra Benites assumed the role of director of visual arts of Brazil’s National Foundation of the Arts (FUNARTE) and in 2025 completed her doctorate.
2 Ancestral future is a term used by indigenous leader and philosopher Ailton Krenak.
3 The conversation took place on October 26th, 2022, just days prior to the second-round general election face off of Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. At that time, Bolsonaro had been in power for four years and his government had been devastating for indigenous peoples, diversity, the environment, and arts and culture.
4 In Portuguese the verb translate (traduzir) is phonetically close to the word to betray (trahir).
5 Selvagem is a platform of talks, courses and publications on ecology, environment, art, and indigenous culture organized by the editor and publisher Anna Dantes in collaboration with the indigenous leader and philosopher Ailton Krenak.
6 Serviço Social do Comércio, also known by the acronym SESC, is a Brazilian non-profit private institution. It has operations all over Brazil with many cultural centers that present exhibitions, courses, workshops and a wide range of other services.
7 Benites is playing on the meanings and phonetics of the verb acordar (to wake up) and the expression fazer um acordo (to make an agreement).
