Indigenous Histories: Sections & Curators

Titled Activisms, the collaborative section will gather artworks from different indigenous social and political movements around the world, including flags, photography, videos, paintings, and posters.

Highlights will include Edgar Corrêa Kanaykõ’s series, Acampamento Terra Livre [Free Land Camp] (2023), which records the events of the annual summit "Acampamento Terra Livre" where thousands of Indigenous Peoples travel from all over Brazil to meet in Brasília, the capital of the country, to demand the government protect their rights, as well as Lasso is a Weapon (2015) by Suohpanterror, a Sámi collective of mostly anonymous artists who produce artistic resources and organize collective performances.

In Nourishing Relations: Family, Community, and Land, the voices of Inuit, First Nations, and Métis artists will speak to the continuity of cultures and the connectivity between all things. Highlighting the resiliency of indigenous place-based knowledge, artists such as Barry Ace, Melissa General and Jim Logan will speak to the significance of our relationships to the land, and to one another, through a contemporary lens informed by adaptation and diverse traditions.

Curators
Anishinaabe (Ojibway) and member of the Neyashiingamiing Chippewas of Nawash Unceded First Nation in Cape Croker, Ontario, Michelle LaVallee currently holds the inaugural position of Director of Indigenous Ways and Curatorial Initiatives at the National Gallery of Canada. Her curatorial practice has frequently explored the colonial relations that have shaped historical and contemporary culture, through exhibitions including Radical Stitch (2022–2024); Moving Forward, Never Forgetting (2015); Blow Your House In: Vernon Ah Kee (2009) and 7: Professional Native Indian Artists Inc. (2013–2016). Jocelyn Piirainen is Inuk from Ikaluktutiak, Nunavut, and newly appointed Associate Curator of Indigenous Ways and Decolonization at the National Gallery of Canada (2022), following her position at Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq. Part of their team are also Wahsontiio Cross (Associate Curator, Indigenous Ways and Decolonization) and Alexandra Kahsenni:io Nahwegahbow (Associate Curator, Historical Indigenous Art) from the National Gallery of Canada.

Identity will be explored as a plural concept, both unstable and self-contradictory, in The Construction of the “Self”. Each of the works gathered in this section will question the construction of Mexican images, without a linear or chronological approach or organization. Here key works will include Indian Wedding (c. 1931) by Alfredo Ramos Martínez and Francisco Toledo’s Autorretrato 61 [Self-Portrait 61] (2007), a series of polaroids where notions of self-representation are diluted into a multiple and unstable self, that is, “us” and “them” together: the artist, the activist, the guru, the philanthropist, the shaman, the good citizen, and the common man, the so-called “indio”.

Curator:
Visual artist and active member of the Intergalactic Taoist Tai Chi Society. Abraham Cruzivillegas’ work has been exhibited at the Bass Museum of Art, Miami (2022); the Honolulu Biennial (2019); the Sydney Biennial (2018); Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Arte, Mexico City (2018); Kunsthaus Zürich (2018); the Nicaragua Biennial (2016); Tate Modern, London (2015); Sharjah Biennial 12 (2015); Museo Jumex, Mexico City; Museo Amparo, Puebla (2014); Documenta 13, Kassel (2012); the 12th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul (2011); the 6th Seoul Mediacity Biennale (2010); the 10th Biennial de Havana (2009) and the 50th Biennale di Venezia (2003), among others. In 2016, Harvard University Press published his collected writings The Logic of Disorder.

The chapter dedicated to Desert Painting Histories will focus on a single and significant moment in time, illustrating the outstanding strength and vitality of Aboriginal art in contemporary Australia. In 1971, a teacher in the small village of Papunya proposed that his students and members of the local community paint a set of murals on the school’s walls. The activity caught on, and before long a group of more than a dozen people were painting daily, developing a movement that gradually spread to other regions. Creating works of national and international significance, artists including Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi and Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri brought increasing attention and recognition to the movement. Entering wider art circuit, the popularity of “dot” painting grew rapidly. Within a few decades, this artistic style became synonymous with Aboriginal people and culture, as well as an iconic element of the Australian cultural vernacular.

Curator:
Member of the Wierdi people of the Birri Gubba Nation of Wribpid (central Queensland), Bruce Johnson-McLean is currently the Barbara Jean Humphreys Assistant Director, Indigenous Engagement at the National Gallery of Australia. Johnson-McLean was formerly a Curator of Indigenous Australian Art at QAGOMA. He has also been part of the curatorial team for the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (2018–19), GOMA Q: Contemporary Queensland Art (2015); Land, Sea and Sky: Contemporary Art of the Torres Strait Islands (2011); Story Place: Indigenous Art of Cape York and the Rainforest (2003); and the Contemporary Australia series. In 2002, he was awarded the National Aboriginal Youth of the Year.

The colonial system turned the lives of the Andes populations upside down; this general subversion of order is defined in Quechua and Aymara as pachakuti, a word referring to a subversion of the order of things, of the space-time binomial overturned. The story narrated in Pachakuti: The World Upside Down speaks to the representation of individuals who went from being conquered objects to objects of study, who have transformed and reformulated themselves to be heard and felt. Homage to the Martyrs of the Azapampa Battle 1820 (2021), by Antonio Paucar, Pedro Gonzáles Paucar and Javier Gonzáles Paucar, will be a key piece in this section, recognizing the indigenous presence in Peru’s wars of independence, forgotten by the rest of the national territory.

Curator:
In 2002, visual artist Sandra Gamarra created LiMac, a real/fake museum, as a response to the institutional vacuum in Peru. Initially based on “souvenirs” such as erasers, pencils, and yo-yos, Gamarra developed the museum’s collection with her painted appropriations and her architectural project for an invisible building under the desert of Lima. Always camouflaged and hybrid, Sandra Gamarra’s constant use of painting acts as a mirror that not only changes exhibition formats and narratives, but the very ownership and circulation of Western culture. She studied Fine Arts at the Universidad Católica del Perú

Rupturing Representation will present contemporary Māori art from Aotearoa New Zealand. The section examines forms of representation that have impacted and shaped conversations about Māori art, presented through the work of 14 artists spanning from the mid-1900s until today. Highlights will include Sandy Adsett’s Koiri Series (1981), which brought new interpretations to the visual language of Māori kōwhaiwhai painting, and Atua [God] (2022) by Māhia Te Kore and Tanu Gago, a work that reframes Pacific cosmology through a queer indigenous lens.

Curator:
A writer specializing in Māori art, Nigel Borell currently holds the position as the Curator Taonga Māori at the Auckland War Memorial Museum. Nigel is of Pirirakau, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi, Te Whakatōhea Māori tribal descent, and has curated exhibitions such as The Māori Portraits: Gottfried Lindauer’s New Zealand, De Young Fine Arts Museum, San Francisco (2017); Toi Tū Toi Ora: Contemporary Māori Art, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (2020–2021); and cocurated Moa Hunter Fashions, Areta Wilkinson for the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, Australia (2018).

The old Northern Sámi word várveš refers to an ability to sense something before others, or simply to know when to keep quiet and hide your knowledge when threatened. The works in Várveš: Hidden from the Day will represent the strong bond between the Sámi with nature and land, embodied in the duodji – a word that encompasses the creation of objects as well as cosmovision, spirituality and knowledge. Indigenous artists have kept the connection to their land and their spiritual world, trusting their várveš abilities and raising the alarm in the hope that the world will listen and take responsibility for our continued existence. As exemplified in the photograph/performance, Hidden from the Day (2018), by Marja Helander, the work depicts the town of Giron/Kiruna being dismantled as it risks total collapse due to long-term heavy mining.

Curator:
PhD fellow at the Arctic University of Norway and a member of the research group Worlding Northern Art, Irene Snarby has researched and worked in the field of Sámi art since the early 1990s. For several years, she worked as a curator at RiddoDuottarMuseat, in Karasjok. In addition, she was a member of the Sámi Parliament’s acquisition committee for contemporary art and dáiddaduodji. Besides working as a consultant and curator, Snarby has written numerous articles, edited several publications, and lectured widely on the subject of Sámi art.

In Time Not Time, audiences will embark on a journey beyond Western notions of time to discover different cultural perspectives on temporality, from cycles found in nature to dialogues between invisible and visible worlds, existing in a stream of both past and present. A key artwork in this section will be Nepu Arquepu [Monkey Hammock] (2021) by Duhigó, which depicts a birth ritual of the Tukano people, focusing on the feminine universe of birth and the resting mother in the monkey hammock.

Curators:
Curators-at-Large of Indigenous Art at MASP; Belonging to the Mebengokré people, born in the state of Amapá-Amazônia, Edson Kayapó is an awarded writer by UNESCO, Professor of the Indigenous Intercultural Degree at the Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia da Bahia, a PhD in Education and a Certified Professor at the Universidade Federal do Sul da Bahia. Kássia Borges Karajaá studied Visual Arts at the Brazilian Universities UFU and UFRGS, has a PhD degree in Environmental Sciences and Sustainability in the Amazon, and a postgraduate degree in Political Philosophy. She is Associate Professor at UFU and part of the Network for Environmental Studies in Portuguese-speaking Countries. As a member of the collective Mahku, she has participated in many exhibitions in Brazil and Europe. Journalist, screenwriter, curator, producer, and artist, Renata Tupinambá has been working since 2005 in disseminating Indigenous cultures through various projects. Founder of Originárias Produções, she was also co-founder and coordinator of Rádio Yandê, the first Brazilian Indigenous web radio. In 2018, she created the Originárias Podcast, the first in Brazil of interviews with Indigenous artists, filmmakers, and musicians.