In 2017, when we started Tembetá – a pioneering collection of anthologies of texts and interviews by indigenous thinkers – one of the first names that came to light was that of the Macuxi visual artist and writer Jaider Esbell. A very interesting figure, who created a new incorporation of the myth of Makunaima back to his people, Jaider was also one of the most innovative visual artists of contemporary art in Brazil. The interview took place at my home in Jardim Botânico that same year, in partnership with anthropologist Nina Vincent, who was studying his work. Here is a fragment of what must be one of Jaider’s longest and most complete interviews, lasting around two and a half hours, and which was published in full in the volume in his honor in the Tembetá collection in 2018. Jaider sadly passed away prematurely in 2022, leaving behind a work of great vigor and originality. [Sergio Cohn]
You talk a lot about the idea of circulating your work, of visiting different communities and different spaces. How did this restlessness begin and how has it developed over the years?
Displacement is part of my life, which is driven by this curiosity about what is new. A curiosity about the world. And from the moment I see myself with the real possibility of providing a new, different experience for other people who are more or less connected with the same energy, I decide to go towards them. This presupposes the initiative to go on the road. So my travels within Brazil and even abroad intensified in 2013, when I was invited to do an experience in the United States, at the University of Pitzer College. It was a shared teaching experience with Professor Lêda Martins. We were going to teach a course involving art and anthropology in the Amazon, and then she invited me and gave me the freedom to choose the title of our course. I proposed that we do “Run to the forest”, which is an analysis of this new displacement, which is people going to the forest. When I went to the United States, I did an exhibition that involved “The cow in the lands of Makunaíma: From cursed to desired”, which deals with the arrival of an animal that has become very present in my state. I made this big move and spent eight months in the United States. And there I discovered that I feel great joy and comfort in being on the move.
So when I return to Brazil, I don’t go back to my work at the company. I live exclusively from my art. This forces me to travel a lot to answer calls from communities in the Amazon region and other Brazilian states. And I’m also starting to travel abroad, taking part in film projects. So, in 2016, I decide to cut the umbilical cord with the company, to resign, and then I’m left with the idea of a freedom that urgently needs to be filled with an activity, in order to take a big step at another time in my life. Leaving the company, being free, didn’t really mean being on vacation, or living a random life without commitment or major responsibilities.
I had finished the exhibition “Once Upon a Time in the Amazon”, “It Was Amazon”, a study of my recent discovery of black Canson paper and posca pens, which made a big difference to my production. I made this first collection in black and white, about the Amazon. I exhibited it in Boa Vista and felt how impactful it was, how necessary. I believed it deserved to be taken in a contextualized way to other environments in Brazil. Through the Internet, I’m starting to do another part of my work, which is training and networking. I write a brief guide for a set of actions, which I call “Itinerâncias”. It’s not exactly a project, but it’s a guide for a journey, to start opening up horizons for various contextual dialogues. Through this proposal, I begin to find physical environments in which to exhibit. Usually in alternative environments, with a minimum audience interested in the subject. The approach is always to offer the possibility of socializing, never in an imposing or appealing way. It’s always an interaction. And this has brought a lot of response.
I’ll start the itinerancy from Maranhão in 2016. The first season takes six months. And from then on I take the exhibition to other places, always with the same model: the works, the conceptual talks and the experiences. I’m starting to live a new moment in my career as an artist, with my life entirely dedicated to the tasks and activities surrounding art. I became an independent artist with a very clear purpose and commitment. Art-activism began to emerge more clearly in my production, seriously discussing stopping the devastation of the Amazon rainforest as an opening to greater arguments for all the minorities here in the region. And also with the global argument of the importance of the forest for the planet.
From there, I try to focus my work more on this conjunctural performance from an environmentalist perspective focused on the Amazon. And from there I also distribute the artistic and conjunctural work to the Amazonian people and communities. Always having some parameters to guide this intercultural relationship in a more expanded way. It’s the major challenge of how to interpret culture as something constructive and not exactly as something domineering and oppressive, as has been practiced by many people.
How can art bring new interpretations to the very idea of culture? How can art decisively influence the idea of becoming more civilized? These are cross-cutting, universal, global issues, but they come knocking at our door when we are faced with indigenous issues. Like infanticide itself, which is still very latent, or in African cultures the mutilation of girls. And now slavery, pure and simple, with people chained up like animals, is coming back again. This whole idea of a time that was thought to be gone is coming back. And you realize that within the Amazon rainforest, for example, there are natives who still live, not necessarily isolated, but contacted by the most disastrous, saddest reflection of civilization, which is fear, which is the affront, which is that first contact of exploring a place, which presupposes a lot of violence and extermination.
All this reading of the world, which we make of an extrapolated and civilized idea of humanity, in the end turns out to be savagery, and at the same time there is primitive man living in the forest. You can make a contemporary analysis of these two far-flung parameters and see that the challenge is very great indeed. Knowledge, skill and leadership, in particular, are what is really lacking between cultures in order to seek a more constructive dialog that escapes this idea of radicalism, of extremism. Like religions themselves, especially Christian religions, which take root very quickly among indigenous communities, offering yet another challenge to the original thinking of these cultures and their relationship with their origin, which is the forest, nature.
It’s clear from your speech that the idea of autonomy is very dear to you. You also want to escape from imprisonment, from state bureaucracy, from commercial intermediaries and everything else. What is this search for autonomy like?
My whole idea of autonomy takes me back to the trajectory of my family culture, which had a very present idea of freedom. Although you knew that you had to work to build a house, to earn money, there was always the alternative that you didn’t want to, that you could opt out of this arrangement. I don’t have that experience of being forced into anything. Although the relationship with my mother, especially in the education process, was very tough. Even the violence of the spanking and other beatings I received. Even that I can’t consider, my cognition doesn’t process it as an imposition. It’s even diluted as a certain way of showing affection and protection that doesn’t reflect negatively.
I believe in my way of seeing the world. I’ve always believed in freedom. On the other hand, freedom brings rigor and discipline so that it can be realized. This freedom to see that it is possible, yes, to feel this issue that is contemporary, that is Western and that has been introjected among the Indians too, which is the idea of childhood. This idea of happiness, of plenitude in childhood. Yes, to choose to take on this artistic talent, because I could very well not have given in to this idea and remained in my federal job, earning my good salary, my comfort, having my house in the city. I gave it all up to live exactly the essence that my body, that my existential structure, demands. That’s what autonomy is for me.
Having also spent a not-so-short period, to a certain extent a long one, being bossed around, being coordinated, being restricted, monitored, as a civil servant, I discovered that I didn’t like these sensations. And I realized that, deep down, the essence of education, for an idea of truly liberating education, can never be oppression or imposition. I myself have often felt this obligation at school, and even at university, of having to sit in a chair for so many hours, forcibly, even without being able to talk to the teacher. And I believe that from this experience I established this criterion, this rigor, of autonomy. I see that in indigenous communities, autonomy has been undermined for a long time, ever since the conquistadors arrived. Together with the church, which was another body, another organism that also totally distorted the political situation, the way communities were organized, with the new proposal of settlement. From then on, an ancient tradition of self-organization was broken, of knowing how to do things for oneself and being on the move. This begins to create a dependency on external guidance to manage oneself.
Perhaps this explains why today some Indians are so comfortable with this sense of external dependence, of waiting for someone to come and offer them something. This leads them, in a more extreme condition, to be considered “pidones”. And the settlement brings a series of problems. The excesses caused by increased density must be avoided. There are health issues, issues of inter-family relations, these closer social issues. There’s all this reading that needs to be done, so that we can talk strongly again about this idea of autonomy. So that’s what autonomy is for me: trying, through the power of art, to take our memory beyond that moment, beyond the contacts and this relationship situation, beyond the creation of dependency and cultural loss.
If we manage to make art according to the skills we have, if we manage to wander through the memory of that pre-contact time, if we manage to establish these relationships, we can go a little further than mere visuality and enable another way of dealing with the world. Mere visuality also tends to fixate on us, which is a problem. Because we indigenous people come from a very oral, very visual tradition, with fewer specific languages. It’s a very sensitive and spiritual tradition.
When you start doing an academic course, for example, you enter another methodological program, which presupposes systematic, crude and simple mechanization, and you forget a lot about this leg of the tripod, which is spirituality. I believe that art should dive in by any means possible. Because it has the capacity, it has all the freedom to go and make itself. And every new technology that emerges always presupposes a very attentive turning inwards, to really seek one’s own nourishment, an inner flame, which is the question of spirituality. And that also presupposes a great challenge on the contemporary scene, as it opposes, I repeat, the dominance of a monotheistic and classist religion, which is Christianity.
I had this clarity very early on, of preparing myself, experiencing various situations, various contexts, including trips to other environments, to other countries, until I actually realized when the time was right to position myself artistically. In this sense, I took the opposite route to what most other artists do: I discovered myself as a human being first. So all the crickets, all the big existential questions in my life were dealt with from a very early age. Not that they’ve been exhausted or resolved, but they were dealt with very early on to give me this freedom to create. Even if I can’t exactly explain it. But I do know that, in a way, life has guided me towards this.
I’ve built up this whole reverse trajectory of the romantic idea of being an artist, of having to starve, of making all that classic romantic pilgrimage that we already know, until I make sense and make sense. I’ve come a different way, and I’m already presenting a product that I’ve been mulling over since childhood, which is my first work, my debut book. This first book came about in a way that gave me a lot of dignity, a Funarte scholarship award in 2010. In the book, I was able to present my approach, which is always a conjuncture between the contemporary and the traditional. It’s called “Terreiro de Makunaima: Myths, legends, stories in experiences”. It’s made up of ten neocontos, neomitos, who have been trying to show reflections of this ancestry, this spirituality that I bring from my childhood, in the contemporary context. What would be the idea of living as a caboclo, this mixed, uncharacterized being, who in a way is also demoralized.
The book makes a provocation by once again touching on the name of Makunaima, which is a name that has been largely forgotten in its original form, before the modernist adaptation. It’s a name outside the academic circuit, which is where Brazilian literary thought is built. And bringing him back, beyond the work of Mário de Andrade, is an invitation to reposition oneself in a new geography. And it was a very interesting experience of autonomy and self-confidence, because when I invest for the first time in a public call for proposals and manage, within a rigorous selection, to be selected, it gives me great dignity. My life once again deprives me of a sense of humiliation, of having to make a huge pilgrimage in order to publish a book and be recognized in the industry. My own initiative in taking action, in deciding to publish, even in the face of an explicit invitation from two friends to give up, to stop, because they didn’t think it was time, was very important to me. This fight with life, with the signs and the invitations to give up, makes me think more and more about autonomy. And to share all my experience with the people, with whoever wants to listen to me.
I’m always emphasizing: anyone who invites me to talk should listen to the story of the tortoise who fought with the jaguar and the other fantastic stories of our origin. They will never hear me talk about the great classics, the great Western thinkers, whom I will probably never quote. I’m aware that what I have in terms of talent and information is enough to do my job very well. And my job is to be a real provocateur. Not an irresponsible provocation or a playful joke with creativity, but exactly knowing that with the little you have, you can not only learn a lot more, but also provide curiosity so that from there you can really seek your own liberation.
All this is what life has led me to believe, because it has guided me in this direction, towards my own search. Life awakened in me a clear desire, with a sensitivity that was well worked out. I was able to read that call, that inspiration, and I followed the rigor. Even when I found it boring. I found pleasure in school, even though I often found it very boring, because all my life I’ve worked on all my emotions. If you’re going to be in a boring place, but then you’re going to breathe in a nice place, you’re going to live in the boring moment and discover the pleasurable moment within the boring moment. This is my way of dealing with the most complicated situations in life, of dealing with bureaucracy, which is also something that scares me a lot.
As we come from a world, a family, a very autonomous culture, there was never a hierarchy, there was never a protocol, there was never a major authorization or an order from above for us to decide to do things. My whole worldview was very autonomous. Having a river and being able to go fishing, having a mountain and being able to climb it, get wood to make firewood… A very non-prohibitive experience. So I believe that we did experience the idea of freedom. Of autonomy and freedom. I can’t talk about anything else, any other experience, because I haven’t lived it. My life has been in this direction, together with my family. And if the name of that is autonomy, then that’s what I have and that’s what I have to encourage. Because I’m not going to encourage people to be employees or to be slaves or to be dependent on others. The relationship of independence is also closely linked to the idea of one’s own self-capacity.
You’ve set up your own art gallery, where you display your work as well as the work of other indigenous artists. How do you see this strength or limitation of indigenous identity in the role of artist?
The gallery came about in 2013 as the result of a provocation. That’s when I managed to bring together, around a curatorial proposal, eight artists from Roraima, essentially in painting and sculpture, who had been working on their own for a long time, more than 15 or 20 years. Like Carmézia Emiliano, who is our most awarded Brazilian artist in the naïf category. She’s from Roraima. There’s also Bartô, Isaías Miliano, who is an excellent sculptor, although little known. Only a very limited number of people know him beyond Roraima. So this curatorship came about, a proposal I made with the Federal University of Roraima and other partner organizations. We organized a group exhibition, where I presented a proposal to work on the theme of “Cows in the lands of Makunaima”.
Once again, I bring the name of Makunaima into our conjunctural work, so that it serves as a context. It was from this idea that “Cows in the lands of Makunaima: From cursed to desired” emerged. The proposal was to make a visual, artistic reading of the period from when cows arrived in Roraima, which we call the Lands of Makunaima, that circum-Roraima, those fields, to the present day. How the cow was brought, how it arrived, how it was introduced into the environment. So I’m going back to my childhood, to a conflict between the farm and the communities, which was reflected in my home, and where I see that the cow is involved as something of a villain in the story. I make these readings through visual images. I set myself the challenge of, through these images, giving a figurative meaning to the first sensations, the sensations that the first Makuxis had when they saw the first oxen, as soon as they arrived from the barges, climbed the ravine and found no fence, thus invading the entire savannah. It’s possible to imagine how this unfolded: the cow wiping out the Indian’s fields, eating everything, the Indian going to hunt the cow and behind the cow comes the cowboy and the great war begins, which brings us back to the present day. So how do you artistically reproduce these initial sensations? Panic, bewilderment, horror, fascination, amazement. Fear, extreme fear. So there are about seven or eight sensations that I try to portray in my works. Awe, panic, perplexity, enchantment, etc. I’ve tried to figure these sensations. Of course, always humanizing some part of the drawing, to bring out the idea of the Indian and the human sensation. That was my work.
For the other artists, I proposed that they each make a painting that referred to this context of the cattle’s contact with the Indians. We asked for the support of a theoretical text by Paulo Santilli, in which he recounts in his studies, in his narrative, a ritual that we still do today, which is the pepper-in-the-eye ritual. The Makuxis did this ritual as soon as the oxen arrived in the region. Because when the Makuxis first came into contact with the oxen, they would get sick, because the animals were loaded with so much… with an emotional charge and faith, with an extranormal relationship, that they would get sick every time they saw an animal grazing, walking in the fields. So they put pepper in their eyes to protect themselves, to be able to look and not get sick from those new animals. From then on, a whole history of conflict unfolds, which continues to the present day. In fact, until the end of the 20th century, when the great conflict with the Guanabara farm took place, which is also a crucial point in the strengthening of the indigenous movement in the region. And then, in 2009, it culminates in the demarcation of the entire territory of Raposa Serra do Sol as a continuous area, which is a very long chapter, full of very violent passages.
The gallery has been consolidating itself within this line of work, which also includes the library proposal, and basically serves to be a point of reference, with a very direct relationship to the current moment and the prospect of being part of an urban scene in Boa Vista, but also expanding into a regional and even international relationship. Especially from the point of view of reaching out to the communities, not as an educational proposal or with a purely political proposal, but with an art proposal that refers to this whole conjunctural argument of talking about politics, talking about art, talking about territory and identity, within this malleability that we have managed to achieve, with a lot of insistence and stubbornness, for contemporary indigenous art. Because, in my opinion, as one of the exponents of indigenous art in Brazil, it has to be said that the indigenous people themselves have still not managed to understand this whole mixture of concept and skill with object and artifact. They still haven’t managed to really understand that, in a way, I’ve been taking the lead and occupying a lot of space because I’ve been thinking about the conceptual and technical issues of art, and therefore achieving a greater capacity for art to provoke, rather than trying to explain itself. In this sense, art comes in as a provocation and not as a solution. It’s very clear to me that it’s possible to instigate people to discover an answer within themselves, or to confront this idea of conformation directly. That we don’t have to conform or believe that our capacity is limited to a certain point. It’s a provocation to instigate and bring the situation out of a state of complete lethargy. Little by little, the work we’ve been able to do has started a movement against this conformism, an internal discomfort.
We start talking about it a lot and then the indigenous leaders end up realizing that there really is something new, that there are people who are watching, who understand what we’re doing. And that we, as artists, are not spies or enemies of the indigenous movement, but that we can bring an external gaze into the movement itself. And not exactly a condemning gaze, nor exactly a gaze that presents a concrete proposal, but one that brings a provocation, a possibility of pointing out viable alternatives within a more open conjuncture. Because then you reach the level of being a thinking artist, an influencer, something that goes far beyond mere drawing. This is an observation I always make, that art among the Indians is still very much underutilized as it remains merely an illustration, a drawing.
I continue to encourage contemporary indigenous artists to express themselves in the best possible way, because what is really needed is to break away a little from this idea of service and this enchantment that is fixed on the visual. The visual demands, wants a lot, because it’s a sense that’s somewhat pampered. The eye wants everything that’s beautiful, that’s colorful, that’s enchanting, that’s entertaining, and then it forgets about the other senses. And contemporary indigenous art has this power to bring all this expectation of meeting these other demands to the other senses, especially the more subtle one, which is this question of spirituality, of being spiritualized. This refers to a need for a closer relationship with nature, and this also generates a practical relationship with consumption and with the idea of distance between worlds. You don’t feel so urban and you don’t see the forest as far away when you feel the need to be part of it. This greater exercise of the paths of art in an expanded, new environment. Today there is the possibility of new indigenous artists and thinkers emerging, intellectuals and at the same time with their own spiritualities.
The gallery has a kind of way of dealing with the public, which includes food, parties and rituals. It’s not just about the exhibition or the merchandise. According to its proposal, it also becomes a space for socializing and even the construction of other possible convivialities.
Exactly. The gallery came about with the aim of making an invitation through visuality. More and more, I believe that indigenous culture has to really learn, and this is a need that I feel, to present ourselves with dignity to this big society. Because if there’s a certain unanimity among indigenous people, it’s that we’ve had enough of so many people speaking for us. What we want is this space to speak. It’s past time to speak out. And today there is a real chance for us to present ourselves with dignity to society at large. And our argument that we are not presented properly has to be countered with a proper presentation. And every time we occupy these spaces, let’s expand them, maintain them and think about them critically. Only in this way will we be able to meet the real demands of how to seek respect, visibility and respectability within such an oppressive society. If we can’t make use of the possibilities to present ourselves properly as an indigenous culture within this de-characterizing context that is contemporaneity, when we leave the village and merely go to a school, we are no longer indigenous because we have distanced ourselves from our culture.
So the proposal for the gallery really comes down to being a space for mutual discovery. It’s a space of provocation, because the fact that it’s located today in the Paraviana neighborhood, which is a noble neighborhood, a neighborhood of millionaires, in the city of Boa Vista, and the fact that I’m indigenous and I’m there, occupying that space, has bothered the neighbors nearby. We hear jokes from the foot of the wall saying that we should be in the bush, that we shouldn’t be in the city. It does bother us, and in a way it’s an act of resistance. And we’re making progress. From the moment we decide, with great pride, to occupy that legitimate space, which is legal, and especially that it is autonomous, it is a way of saying to the larger movement, to Brazil, that indigenous people are totally full and capable. It does depend on situational issues of opportunity and access. But we are certainly capable.
The gallery comes with this proposal of having this collective reference, of covering more than one ethnic group, five, six, seven ethnic groups from the region. It also focuses on paintings, artifacts, contemporary objects. Because it doesn’t have much of a museum perspective, but a perspective of situating the Indians in the now. And, at the same time, opening a great door to this research, to this ancestral reach. In this sense, perhaps there is the constitution of a museum, because there are pieces from various peoples gathered together. And the figure of the contemporary indigenous person, who is often out of place, mischaracterized. But it’s there, and refers to this whole conjuncture of research and the paths that can be taken, of unofficial documentation that uncovers various realities, various contexts. This was our way of presenting ourselves properly.
More than once, we’ve brought entire communities to the city, coming from their own area, their own community, to socialize in the gallery. They went into this gallery environment, into an urban environment. We did this with the Makuxi culture, for example. We presented various forms of braiding, clay pots, medicinal plants. All kinds of things. And from this perspective, we invited a community to do one or two traditional activities. And from there, to arouse curiosity among the community, a self-provocation, to stand up, to be aroused, to revive even old, forgotten practices. It’s work that can no longer be measured as an organization, as an institution. It’s doing distributed in practice.
What about the question of indigenous artists? How important is this “indigenous” to your work and how imprisoning is it? When does it become a barrier and when does it become an affirmation? You use the term “contemporary indigenous art”. What has this term brought to you, what does it mean to you, and why is it used in this way?
So we need to make it clear that it’s “contemporary indigenous art” and not “ indigenous contemporary art”. I shy away from explaining the latter too much and try to explain the former, contemporary indigenous art. It sounds very comfortable, to understand that art has always been among the Indians and today it doesn’t just resurface, but, through the strength of the artists themselves, and the context in which they are placed and led to argue, that it is contemporary, and when it argues that it is contemporary, and before being contemporary it is indigenous, it automatically carries in its framework all this ancestral, millenary, mythological and spiritual reflection.
When people say it’s indigenous contemporary art, it seems like it’s coming from outside and wants to Indianize itself here with us, coming from an external environment, as if it didn’t exist before among the Indians. And it’s come along and wants to be part of it, kind of by force, not knowing exactly at what juncture. That’s why it’s important to maintain that it’s contemporary indigenous art, because art has always been among the Indians, and today when the word “contemporary” is used, it dresses itself up, it captures this need to be commercial in its arguments. But to be provocative well before being commercial. It is an art of provocation, of promotion and of strengthening the scene and contemporary indigenous identities. Selling is a second activity and it’s not exactly unnecessary because, I’ll say it again, we live in an urban context, in a context of capitalism, we are autonomous and to think of a conjunctural work without money is even anti-pedagogical, anti-didactic.
Contemporary indigenous art takes on this great challenge of inviting the Indian himself to think about his current reality. Because there is, in fact, a very simplistic way of looking at indigenous diversity as a single, common thing. A group of people who live in the forest and want to survive and fight to survive. There is a simplification in this sense. Contemporary indigenous art provokes the Indian himself to think, and even to think about something other than collective autonomy, which is the autonomy of the individual, which is something that isn’t originally thought about much in these cultures. They don’t think about the individual, the indigenous citizen himself, as if he never had individual needs. Or to sustain an argument about culture, about the term “culture”, when that very term “culture” is not scrutinized among those who are represented, in other words, the indigenous diversities.
We held a festival in Boa Vista, the “Meeting of All Peoples”. It was a partnership with the Federal University of Roraima. And Gerson Xirixana, who is from the Yanomami indigenous reserve, went to this meeting. Afterwards, he invited me to his community, because he wanted to understand more about art’s ability to do something in this media sense. Because he realized that art could fulfill a need for his people, which was to present themselves to the world as Xirixana, because after a while they learned that everyone called them Yanomami and they didn’t really understand why. Then they found out that when they went to campaign to demarcate the territory, as a matter of political and marketing strategy, they said that everyone was Yanomami, to gain strength and summarize the issue. Everyone became Yanomami. When they discovered this, they said: “No, we’re not Yanomami, we’re Xirixana. We have our own territory, our own language, our own region, our own identity… And we’re going to claim it! We want to be Xirixana”.
This is a practical example of art among the Indians, from one Indian to another. Art is seen as a resource, as viability, as curiosity, as a possibility for claiming something within this idea of collectivity, but within an individuality, within a large mass of constituted bodies, which would be the Yanomami in relation to the Xirixana. The first time I went to this community, as an independent artist, I made contact with the Federal University, which sent a cameraman to do a story.
This is also evidence of my capacity for politics, flexibility and dialog skills to build a network and fluidity of work, of contemporary indigenous art serving the visibility of a people. And reaching a previously unthinkable space. We did the story, which appeared on Rede Brasil. It even became a meme, in a situation where one of the TV comedians couldn’t say the name Xirixana, took it to mean something derogatory and started laughing. And in this we have an example to show that even with the positive aspects, there are always risks of falling into a media trap, when you seek this greater openness to the media than to art.
Contemporary indigenous art has been experimenting with all these spaces, all these languages, all these technologies. And that’s where the gallery comes in. Contemporary indigenous art has argued for this physical space, for this language, for this commercial proposal, to be an environment for gathering art, to strengthen itself. Art among the Indians is also an invitation to this question of orality, to go back and discard so many images and learn to pay attention to the essence of listening. The enormous importance of speech. So that we can return to building new consciousnesses and, once again, return to the field of visualities, of producing new knowledge. This is a very strong tool, a skill of indigenous peoples that needs to be paid attention to. Because it’s a way of reordering thinking, and it’s a very strong invitation to go beyond the current situation.
In fact, I’d like to invite the indigenous evangelicals to take another look at their ancestry and give a little strength to remove the nonsense, the blindness of being enchanted by religion. To get their critical consciences to begin to emerge. All this is very new, very challenging and disturbing. Contemporary indigenous art comes along with a generation of young artists who are, shall we say, more daring, more daring. This can be a good thing, but it can also be very dangerous, because it’s accompanied by this whole idea of vanity, this whole question of ego, of power. This leads to a very great risk of losing a skill, a new capacity within the idea of the individual.
I’ve consolidated myself within the contemporary environment, full of all the challenges that present themselves and that we’re discovering. That’s why I’m attentive, but I don’t feel the least bit wrong, nor the least bit restricted from doing exactly all these experiments and making legitimate use of all the technologies. And to immerse myself in my own provocation in this idea, in my own search for a spirituality, to learn more from the shamans, always from the perspective of knowledge for freedom. Never seeking a type of catechesis, another type of plastering or submission to a ready-made idea. Of having a master. As is often the case today in the world’s philosophies. They always presuppose categorization, hierarchization and dependence on a master, a guide, a mentor. And I don’t really believe in that anymore.
Therein also lies a commitment, my energy, precisely to define the scope of my speech, how it is received by the person in front of me, so that it doesn’t create or feed this idea of master and disciple. An idea of a guru and someone looking for someone enlightened. But that people have the right words to have the right attitudes and feel free in the world. This full freedom to live and provide life for a larger environment, beyond this idea of direct dependence, of daily dependence on divine action, in a life that is already as wonderful as our life as humans is.