2023-07-06 22:00:00
Sandra Benites, Guarani Ñandeva curator and researcher, at the book launch “Indigenous Peoples in Brazil 2017/2022”| Claudio Tavares/ISA
* Interview given to the book “Indigenous Peoples in Brazil 2017-2022”
Sandra Benites, the first indigenous curator of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (Masp), invites us: to awaken memory through art. This is how she sees the importance of the indigenous body in this space of dispute in the symbolic field. Likewise, this is how she learned to occupy her space in curating and try to imagine art beyond her work, but with the collective sense of sustaining the counter-colonial battle.
sandra is indigenous Guaranteed Our, born in the Porto Lindo/Jacare’y village, in Mato Grosso do Sul, in addition to being an anthropologist, educator and curator. She is currently part of the curatorial body of the Museum of Indigenous Cultures, in São Paulo (SP).
How did your art curating career begin?
I’m a teacher. My struggle and my curatorship began before, from my childhood, my struggle as a woman, as a mother and also as an indigenous person. This is all part of my curatorial training. I think these issues are often not taken into account in these curatorial spaces.
My entry as a curator really started in 2017. I was invited to be part of the curatorial team for the exhibition “Dja Walk Away | Rio de Janeiro indigenous”, to make a project for this exhibition about indigenous people, very focused on the indigenous people’s view of the history of Rio de Janeiro.
For that, we had to listen to each other first, listen, among us curators, and think about how we were going to present the project to relatives in Rio de Janeiro. We joined the team and went to visit the villages twice – and also called the urban relatives to hold a meeting.
Watch the exhibition video “Dja Walk Away | Rio de Janeiro indigenous”:
So, everything started from a process of meeting, of conversation. I like to speak from that point of conversation. In this first experience, many things appeared. The first question that arose from this historical process, [foi] the violence that takes several bodies. Let’s say: the process that captured the bodies of us indigenous people.
This understanding influences several aspects in relation to the information that is passed on about us and the spaces where we can, in fact, place our field of view. The truth is that we are still treated with distance by various institutions and by the community itself. [sociedade].
I went to the Puris [indígenas de São Paulo] and with them I understood that I should work on aspects of memory, which is important for all of us indigenous people. Relatives speak of “awakening memories”. When we started to reflect on some silences, erasures of speech, of our voices, of our ancestors, they said that we always need to wake up our memory.
Read too:
Daiara Tukano: celebrate ancestry and design the world!
Then I went to understand the role that art plays in waking up memory: it’s a way for us to resist, it’s our way of every day. As I am Guarani, waking up our memory for us is always waking up through memory – and we understand that memory as heritage, which is our knowledge, our way of not losing the things that make us.
See post about the return of the Tupinambá mantle, which quotes Sandra Benites:
This is an aspect that I began to discuss as a curator. Our memory continues to keep us moving. Another part that we cannot forget is that this issue is a way of understanding the colonization process, which made us annihilate ourselves in various ways of being. This is part of the Guarani way of being. This was very strong for me: the question of occupation, of taking back your and our ancestral territories. This impediment comes from colonization itself, from this colonial system that prevents us from occupying our place of origin. It is the place to which we have to return, including for art.
In 2020, you became the associate curator at Masp and were the first indigenous woman to occupy this space, which is one of the most important for art in Brazil. From this experience, do you consider that spaces are really opening up for indigenous peoples, for indigenous artists, or is it more a way of showing difference?
When I came in [no Masp], soon the pandemic began and closed everything. In fact, the exposure [que] I was called to curate it, it was about Brazilian indigenous history that was going to happen in 2021. But since the pandemic came, it was postponed to 2023.
I think I was isolated, in a way – I went in but I was isolated. And I thought I was isolated because of the pandemic, but then I saw that they really didn’t have much concern about welcoming me. Therefore, I think that, for me, it was just a place to say that, to show my competence, it had to be the way they want it and not the way I am as an indigenous person. So I ended up asking to leave. Especially because, when we started to make the exhibition “Histórias Brasileiras”, we were called to be part of the nucleus of “Retomadas”, which Clarissa and I [Diniz] we drive. We started to do the work and the Landless Movement (MST) photographs were vetoed and that frustrated me even more.
Read too:
Ailton Krenak: “the earth tires”
In fact I put myself ten times, [expliquei] how is my way of working. And then, when I went to charge, I placed myself as an indigenous person, also in this place that is not just [de] produce and [de] just be there to meet demand, [mas] I was not heard. I was very shocked by this and I felt very bad, because I felt violated, silenced, in many ways.
When I joined, I was asked what would I change [no Masp]. Then I said that I wouldn’t want to change anything, but I would do my best to feel like a soma, [como] part. When we add, we expand the thing, right? And since I didn’t feel comfortable being able to expand, I left for the same reason I joined: to expand.
Do you consider that contemporary art, in itself, is prepared to receive these other narratives and the indigenous body?
There are already many relatives doing this, not only as artists but as intellectuals, as academics, as leaders and many others. Contemporary art appears as a result of a work, but it is much more than that: contemporary arts exist within the community and outside the community.
The artist, in this case, makes the bridge. Not all the artists that are there have resistance, but women, men, the elderly are resisting. They are there resisting. There are many people who go, but in the meantime, there are many people who also remain in their villages, resisting. Mainly the women, the mothers, who are there practicing their prayers for those who are out there.
What is contemporary art for us? It is much more than what can be seen, because there are things that are not to be seen, not to be talked about and that is important only for us. So how do we name it? This is another issue, which I call ancestral memory and which is also a heritage for people, for example, the knowledge of midwives. They have their wisdom to deliver, that’s theirs and it’s nowhere else like that. That too is contemporary art.
It is not possible to just call the artist who is in the gallery, museum or independent of the space. Because, with that, we can reproduce this colonial vision and also silence the other part of the version. The work is much bigger than what is there, right? Let’s say… the object, the painting, I don’t know, what appears there, is much bigger. There are a lot of people holding the art.
What are the other spaces besides the museum that could hold indigenous art?
I think this space they’re claiming [da arte fora do museu] it is important, because there is this idea that the museum only receives. But the museum is also the city’s way of preserving the collection, the knowledge; this idea of staying fixed to conserve is limiting, which to be preserved is important to keep in the city.
From left to right: Sandra Benites, Watatakalu Yawalapiti, Vanda Witoto and Txai Suruí, at the launch of the book “Indigenous Peoples in Brazil 2017/2022″|Claudio Tavares/ISA
What is important for us, indigenous people, maybe it won’t fit inside the Museum. For example the dance; it won’t fit in the museum. When I went to Masp, I had that feeling too. I remember many relatives saying: “Look, how are we going to make a fire [aqui]?”. For example, when we want to make a conversation circle, only indigenous people [Guarani], we use the bonfire. Does the museum let us make a fire? A conversation wheel and around the campfire? No, there is no structure for that. So what can the museum do? We can question this. The museum can expand and extend based on this demand. And I think this is the challenge: thinking about these spaces [em] that fit the real needs of indigenous peoples.
So indigenous art is not this delimited thing but at the same time it needs a demarcation? What is the political importance of this demarcation?
It is important to say that we are also there to compete on an equal footing with the jurua artists [não indígenas] who have this knowledge, who have a name. I think that young indigenous artists began to cross these borders with greater force. In truth, [essa fronteira] it was not placed by us; the borders of the art world were not placed by us indigenous people either, but by western thought itself of understanding that art is that way, in a way.
We also understand that we have our essence as indigenous people, an essence also in art. But we are also aware that this is not an important way for us, but, in a very ironic way, we need to be in dialogue, be in the same place, even to be able to discuss these issues.
Do you understand that indigenous art can be a possible tool to make this country wake up its memory and wake up to other imaginaries and possible realities?
To think about the future, we need to do it as if it were a sifting of memory, so that we can continue with what is important to us and, of course, that we also don’t let go of what was bad. Because this is for us to create other paths. It’s not that we have to leave it behind, we have to forget everything, that’s not it. In fact, we need, from there [memória]create other paths for the future and not deny, not scold our feelings.
Brazilian society has a lot of this: [ela] it was constituted, it was transformed, it was born already with this violence, with this distortion of things. We are that and we need to accept that we are different, that Brazil was in fact invaded and stolen, misrepresented and violated.
What is needed today is to come to terms with our memory. How can we walk within our diversity? Indigenous artists are doing their part.
—-
Interview conducted by Tainá Aragão, ISA journalist, in 2022, via videoconferencing platform
#Art #wake #memory