Gustavo Caboco, Makunaima conversa com o espírito do caxiri nos pés de batata roxa, 2023, ph: Courtesy Pinacoteca de São Paulo
Curated by Gustavo Caboco, Macunaíma é Duwid critically revisits Mário de Andrade’s book Macunaíma: The Hero with No Character through the voices of artists and thinkers from the Wapichana, Macuxi, Tauperan, Akawaio, and Patamona peoples.
Weaving together a selection of works and documentary materials from the Pinacoteca’s collection alongside works by contemporary Indigenous artists, Macunaíma é Duwid engages with the appropriation of Macunaíma by the Brazilian modernist movement, cultural catechization, and their echoes today. Duwid, who served as a reference for Mário de Andrade’s character, is celebrated across cultures in Northern Brazil as a creative force of the human world — and is presented in the exhibition through their own perspectives.
“In modernist fiction and its offshoots, Macunaíma was subjected to successive processes of decontextualization: he was baptized, turned into Exu, became Jurupari, Watunna, Karaiwe. Yet the full scope of these productions was rarely seen or accessed by Indigenous peoples—nor were they conceived for them,” comments Gustavo Caboco.
Caboco developed the research behind the exhibition over two years alongside the Ajuri study group. Composed of Indigenous leaders from Roraima, the group also presents a series of commissioned works that give voice to their own narratives of Duwid.
Pt
