The British Museum in London, UK, acquired the work Parixara para acordar os fios da história Wapichana no museu britânico (2023), the result of Gustavo Caboco residency with historian Roseane Cadete, carried out between May and July 2023 at the British institution itself, with support from SDCELAR.  

The project, called Ateliê-Lavrado, investigated Wapichana objects from the collection, colonial archives, and the relationship between cotton, the English Industrial Revolution, and the territorial expansions of the 19th century.   

For this work, the research arose from the question of how the cotton threads of Wapichana history crossed continents until they came to rest in the British Museum. In the painting, objects collected since 1836—rolls of cotton collected by Schomburgk, a spindle, an electric chestnut rattle, and a Wapichana hammock—compose a small map of the connections between colonial ethnography, territorial disputes, and the forced separation of families between Brazil and Guyana.  

The work records an encounter experienced by the researchers and guided by the parixara songs, a moment in which Gustavo and Roseane awaken the stories dormant in the objects. An indigenous figure carries a jamaxim, while a red fabric embroidered with “Dukuzy Ku’uku” — grandfather and grandmother — pays homage to the ancients. The work suggests other avenues of repatriation, those that are achieved through artistic expression and the power of education.