For the event “Reinterpreting Amazonia: Baniwa Perspectives on Indigenous Curation” artist Denilson Baniwa and anthropologist Fran Baniwa were invited to share their experiences in working with museums in Brazil and around the world. The event was initiated by Mr. Francisco Luiz Fontes, a sage of the Baniwa people, from the Waliperedakeenai clan, and a master of dances, songs, flutes, paddles, narration, and healing, and also featured the participation of Lúcia Sá from the University of Manchester and Jamille Pinheiro Dias from the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of London (CLACS).
The speakers defied the way objects are usually understood and classified in museums, questioning the single narratives that they often tell. Denilson’s artistic practice critically engages with the colonial view of Indigenous peoples as static relics of the past; and his curatorship has aimed at showcasing how Indigenous worlds are deeply intertwined with the present. By looking at objects as living beings and part of a complex combination of non-linear histories, Denilson draws on the Baniwa worldview to contest Western notions of space and time.
Denilson Baniwa, Reinterpreting Amazonia, 2024.
Fran’s research further focuses on the many stories that objects tell, from the traditional knowledge associated with their usage to the ancestral practices involved in their making. By looking at Baniwa objects as part of their territory, Fran highlights how materials often lose their manifold meanings when incorporated into museum collections. Her work challenges curatorial practices by proposing new ways of classifying and displaying the making, the knowledge, and associated elements and practices as inseparable parts of objects.
Fran Baniwa, Lúcia Sá and Jamille Pinheiro Dias, Reinterpreting Amazonia, 2024.
In this collaboration between the Santo Domingo Centre for Latin American Research at the British Museum (SDCELAR) and the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of London (CLACS), the Baniwa Delegation was hosted as part of SDCELAR’s project for the Cocuration and Participatory Documentation of Amazonian Collections at the British Museum. During their stay, they visited the Museum’s Prints & Drawings department and engaged with the well-known Richard Spruce’s collection (1860s) from the Rio Negro valley in Amazonia, which currently sits divided between the British Museum and Kew Gardens.
Baniwa head-band © Trustees of The British Museum.
The delegation’s encounter with other, less documented collections from regions ancestrally inhabited by the Baniwa, such as the Aiari and Içana rivers (1960s), further allowed to remap and expand the Baniwa collection at the British Museum, initially thought to consist of no more than three objects. The reinterpretation of these materials that span over one hundred years holds the potential of reviving ancestral knowledge that spans over one too many centuries.
Baniwa Shield © Trustees of The British Museum.
Denilson Baniwa is an artist born in Dari village, Barcelos, Amazonas, who blends ancestral and present-day elements in his art to highlight Indigenous challenges and resist colonial narratives. Using various media, he manipulates images to reveal marginalized Indigenous histories. His work, exhibited globally, critiques colonialism while reflecting contemporary Indigenous experiences. Notable exhibitions include the 22nd Sydney Biennale, Centro Cultural São Paulo, and the Pinacoteca de São Paulo. He is preparing exhibitions for the Quai Branly Museum in Paris and the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, with a major show opening at Princeton University in 2024. He was also one of the curators of the Hãhãwpuá Pavilion representing Brazil at the 60th Venice Biennale.
Fran Baniwa is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Rio de Janeiro’s Museu Nacional. She belongs to the Baniwa people of the Terra Indígena do Alto Rio Negro. She is the first Indigenous woman to publish an anthropological monograph in Brazil. Her book, Umbigo do mundo (‘The Navel of the World’, Dantes Editora, 2023), is a journey through stories and myths that reveal the cosmology of the Baniwa people. Fran also collaborates in the curatorship of the Museu dos Povos Indígenas in Brazil, where she further coordinates the project Vida e arte das mulheres Baniwa: Um olhar de dentro para fora (‘Life and art among Baniwa women: a gaze from inside out’) in partnership with Unesco.
Lúcia Sá is Professor of Brazilian Studies at the University of Manchester. She is the author of Rainforest Literatures: Amazonian Texts and Latin American Cultures (University of Minnesota Press: 2007) and of various articles on Amazonian indigenous cultures. She was Principal Investigator for the Arts and Humanities Research Council project ‘Racism and anti-racism in Brazil: the case of Indigenous Peoples’ (2017-2018) and is currently co-investigator in the Arts and Humanities Research Council project ‘Cultures of Anti-Racism in Latin America’.
Jamille Pinheiro Dias is the director of the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the co-director of the Environmental Humanities Research Hub at the University of London’s School of Advanced Study, where she also works as a lecturer. She is also an affiliate faculty member at Duke University’s Amazon Lab. Her research is dedicated to the intersection between the Environmental Humanities and Indigenous arts and activism, with a focus on Brazilian Amazonia.
Louise Cardoso de Mello is the curator for Latin America at the British Museum and Head of the Santo Domingo Centre of Excellence for Latin American Research (SDCELAR). She is an anthropologist and archaeologist with a PhD in history, specializing in Amazonia. Louise has held affiliations with the University of Cambridge, Harvard University, the National Museum in Brazil and the Museum of Huelva, and she is currently a Transatlantic Fellow at the American Trust for the British Library.
Publications related to women’s and maternal health with Wixárika communities by the author of this exhibition
Gamlin, Jennie B. (2013)
Shame as a barrier to health seeking among indigenous Huichol migrant labourers: An interpretive approach of the “violence continuum” and “authoritative knowledge”
Social Science and Medicine 97 75-81
Gamlin, Jennie B. (2023)
Wixárika Practices of Medical Syncretism: An Ontological Proposal for Health in the Anthropocene
Medical Anthropology Theory 10 (2) 1-26
Gamlin, Jennie B. (2020)
“You see, we women, we can’t talk, we can’t have an opinion…”. The coloniality of gender and childbirth practices in Indigenous Wixárika families
Social Science and Medicine 252, 112912
Jennie Gamlin and David Osrin (2020)
Preventable infant deaths, lone births and lack of registration in Mexican indigenous communities: health care services and the afterlife of colonialism
Ethnicity and Health 25 (7)
Jennie Gamlin and Seth Holmes (2018)
Preventable perinatal deaths in indigenous Wixárika communities: an ethnographic study of pregnancy, childbirth and structural violence BMC
Pregnancy and Childbirth 18 (Article number 243) 2018
Gamlin, Jennie B. and Sarah J Hawkes (2015)
Pregnancy and birth in an Indigenous Huichol community: from structural violence to structural policy responses
Culture, health and sexuality 17 (1)