‘Artes Vivas’ Indigenous collective is part of the collaborative project ‘Collection, Mission, Colonisation: Encounters and Entangled Histories from the Chaco‘ carried out with SDCELAR. The group is based in Paraguay and integrated by Osvaldo Pitoe, Jorge Carema, Efacio Álvarez, Esteban Klassen and Marcos Ortiz (since passed away).
With their drawings, the artists communicate the dispossession of their territories and the loss of autonomy while at the same time they witness the strength and resilience of indigenous ways of living.
“I like to draw fishing, hunting and the search for honey, which are our activities, the ones that nourish us. When we have nothing to eat, I think about fishing. Before, we used to go to the river and catch some fish, and with that we already had enough to eat. Here at the mission, there are no fish; we have to buy something or exchange something for food,” says Jorge Carema.
In March 2022 the artists presented an online open studio about their series of drawings with pen and paper that now you can watch in Spanish with English subtitles.
Watch the video here.
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)
