10 AM — 10:15 AM
Introduction
GUILHERME GIUFRIDA, Assistant Curator, MASP

10:15 AM — 10:45 AM
Opening session

EDSON KAYAPÓ, KÁSSIA BORGES KARAJÁ, and RENATA TUPINAMBÁ
Time not time

The world is made of infinite narratives and perspectives on life, culture, education, memory, or history; it is not an immutable linearity frozen in the past or projected into the future. For Indigenous peoples, atemporality constitutes the worlds that run through all of humanity’s creation. Time Not Time dives outside the time established by the Western world and its philosophy imposed by territorial domination. We need to say: “We have been here for many years, we belong to this territory,” highlighting the fact that we live in a unique moment in which Indigenous artists are reclaiming the field of contemporary Brazilian Indigenous art; but, before thinking about artists who “point” to the future, it is necessary to acknowledge the enduring symbolic operations
of the original peoples who have much deeper ancestral roots.

Mediation: Guilherme Giufrida, Assistant Curator, MASP.

10:45 AM — 12:45 PM
Roundtable

IRENE SNARBY
Várveš: Hidden From the Day

Várveš is an old Northern Sámi word, designating a state of mind or an ability to sense something before others, to see and hear more than those around you. It can also mean the ability to predict things happening in the future, or simply to know when to keep quiet and hide your knowledge when it is threatened. Várveš can also be linked to Sámi animistic religion. It is a divine gift when it comes to survival and being a part of nature, but it can also be deeply disturbing since it confers a responsibility to tell and warn, as artists often do. The Sámi people live in the Sápmi territory, which includes large areas in Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola peninsula in Russia. They share a strong and intimate relationship with nature and with their lands, which is often manifested in duodji. The term encompasses the Sámi worldview, spirituality, knowledge, conceptions of nature, creativity and the creation of objects reflecting life.

SANDRA GAMARRA
Pachakuti: the world upside down

The story being told here is that of the representation of an individual who is no longer a conquered subject but an object of analysis, who has been changed and rearranged to be heard and felt, in a shifting process of floods and ebbs, like the flow of a river. Understanding a person who cannot be understood in isolation from the community he or she belongs to, and the space he or she inhabits, has proved difficult for us since our society is based precisely on the construction of the free individual or the one who dominates the environment. Pachakuti is a Quechua and Aymara concept that refers to a radical change in the order of space and time. This radical process transformed the world of these civilizations that coexist with ours. For their voices to be heard, our voices must also change, allowing us to understand these differences through complementarity, not confrontation.

NIGEL BORELL
Rupturing representation

For indigenous peoples navigating the politics of representation go hand-in-hand with the legacy colonization has played in shaping these understandings. This complex and often fraught history is intertwined with issues of cultural appropriation, authenticity and “the other”. Focusing on contemporary Māori art from Aotearoa New Zealand, this talk examines and unpacks some of the forms of representation that have impacted and shaped conversations about Māori art. Presented through the work of 14 artists, they collectively respond to issues about representation and rupture its colonial legacy. In this way, rupturing representation can be understood as a purposeful act. It is about reclaiming and reinstating forms of representation that centre and empower a Māori worldview and gaze. 

FEDERICO CUATLACUATL
Smuggling as Resistance

Acts of smuggling become gestures of resistance, self-preservation, and rematriation through transborder Indigineity. How do we weaponize ourselves with our own culture? How does culture become a weapon for thriving and sustaining?  How do we embrace being the ‘other’ under so much xenophobia as a means of resisting and building solidarity? How does smuggling one’s own heritage become an act of resistance? 

Mediation: David Ribeiro, Curatorial Assistant, MASP

12:45 PM — 2 PM
Break

2 PM — 4 PM
Roundtable

ABRAHAM CRUZVILLEGAS
The construction of the “self”

At the region now known as Mexico, no representation of the indigenous during colonial time and until after Mexican Revolution, with few exceptions, was made by indigenous artists, as they hardly could be part of any guild or art school. In Mexico’s contemporary society, race and class compose a catalog of all kinds of violence in everyday life, closely related to the idea of the Mestizo: The Cosmic Race. Subjective stories tell more accurately about the knowledge and cultures of indigenous individuals and communities in Mexico, than any institutionalized fate about diversity. These representations of the indigenous artists themselves go along with negotiating in problematic and critical ways with conventionalized indigenism. Overlapping the challenge of belonging to indigenous peoples with any possible genealogy from art history — mixed with their own traditions and languages, including the spoken ones — takes shape in space – by making art – as new questions, like ‘who we are?’, ‘what’s nature?’, or ‘what’s art?’. All together at once.

MICHELLE LAVALLEE e JOCELYN PIIRAINEN
Nourishing relations: family, community, and land

The telling of Indigenous histories occurs along a continuum — where the contours of time become softened, and the past and present continually coalesce. Our worldviews are built around a constellation of relationships, and like living entities, they require thought and care to flourish. Art is a means to tell stories, document histories, and relate everyday experiences to current and future generations. Highlighting the resiliency of Indigenous place-based knowledge, artists speak to the significance of our relations with the land and one another through a contemporary lens informed by adaptation and diverse traditions. Cultural agency and self-determination assert our shared devotion to personal and communal identities, place, and customary practices that permeate generations, cultures, geographies, and languages. Together, the voices of Inuit, First Nations and Métis artists speak to the continuity of cultures, and the connectivity between all things. Our deep connections are nurtured and continually renewed in places of gathering – sites which are embodied both by the land itself and held within spaces of family and community.

BRUCE JOHNSON-McLEAN
Desert painting histories

In 1971, an art project was launched at a local school in the Indigenous village of Papunya, in Australia’s Western Desert. There, a high school teacher proposed a set of murals to be painted by students and members of the local community on the school walls. Many of those involved liked it so much that they asked for painting materials to continue producing works; before long, a larger group was painting every day and created a movement that spread to other Australian regions. As the movement persisted during the following decades, personal styles emerged and the works’ scale increased, from small paintings on wooden planks to large canvases, drawing more and more attention and worldwide acclaim. As these masterpieces entered the wider art circuit, the popularity of the art of painting grew rapidly and, within a few decades, this style became synonymous with Aboriginal people and culture and an iconic element of Australian culture.

LENA STENBERG
Borders

In my last art project, I worked on the basis of extensive photographic material documenting the lives of my ancestors in Tromsdalen, Norway, from 1860 to 1930. When I started looking for images from digital archives, I realized that there were many more photographs than I thought and that was possible to identify them with the help of anthropological photo archives and other researchers. In 1920, due to the settler-colonial nationalist policy enforced on the Sami people, with the closing of the borders, the Sami people were forced to leave their homelands in Norway. This has had profound and lasting impacts on the lives and livelihoods of the Sami people. They were forced to be removed, thereby providing agricultural land for Norwegians. This has affected a whole generation and their children, and grandchildren. It affects the Sami society, even today.

Mediation: Isabella Rjeille, Curator, MASP

4 PM — 5:30 PM
Closing conference

MELISSA CODY
Webbed Skies
Webbed Skies is Melissa Cody’s (Navajo) first international solo exhibition, showcasing 35 years of work to the present. This large survey of weavings show a progression of technique and stylistic exploration that delve into traditional historical contexts to her current narrative. Using the Germantown style of weaving and wool, Cody builds dreamscapes of psychedelic color ways through pattern work like Burntwater, Wide Ruins and Eye Dazzlers. In her most current series of work, she has taken handwoven pieces and reconstructed them into digitally woven works. A new and exciting avenue, Cody’s digital work is expanding her narrative to new audiences and showing the endless possibilities of weaving and storytelling. 

GLICÉRIA TUPINAMBÁ
A Cloak that Speaks

Glicéria Tupinambá’s Manto Tupinambá [Tupinambá Cloak] is a reinterpretation of the ancient 17th-century cloaks of the first Tupinambá people in the colonial period. In her artistic work and encantaria religious practice, as a Tupinambá from Serra do Padeiro, in the city of Buerarema in the far south of Bahia state, she shows the customary power of this ancient technology in the contemporary world. Quando o manto fala [When the cloak speaks] (2023), directed by her and Alexandre Mortágua, is an audiovisual work that reinforces the female perspective and the leading role of Indigenous women. Guided by her intuition, her dreams, and her sensitivity as a mother, woman, and leader, the strength of the story told by the Manto Tupinambá from Serra do Padeiro is evident in her cosmogonic and artistic vision. The Manto is like a witness to the genocide of a nation, and what it says in a universe of subjectivities and mysteries is that its people—as well as its culture—are alive and capable of adapting, bringing their knowledge and science to the world.

Mediation: Renata Tupinambá, Curator-at-Large of Indigenous Art, MASP

ABRAHAM CRUZVILLEGAS
Active member of the Intergalactic Taoist Tai Chi Society. His work has been part of exhibitions in institutions such as The Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach (2022); the Honolulu Biennial (2019); the Sydney Biennial (2018); Museo Universitario de Ciencias y Arte, Mexico City (2018); Kunsthaus Zürich (2018); Ginza Maison Hermès: Le Forum, Tokyo (2017); the Nicaragua Biennial (2016); Tate Modern, London (2015); Sharjah Biennial 12 (2015); Museo Jumex, Mexico City; Museo Amparo, Puebla (2014); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2014); Documenta 13, Kassel (2012); the 12th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul (2011); the 6th Seoul Mediacity Biennale (2010); REDCAT, Los Angeles (2009); the 10th Biennial de Havana (2009); Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow (2008); and the 50th Biennale di Venezia (2003), among others. In 2016, Harvard University Press published his collected writings The Logic of Disorder.

BRUCE JOHNSON-McLEAN
Member of the Wierdi people of the Birri Gubba Nation of Wribpid (central Queensland). He is currently the Barbara Jean Humphreys Assistant Director, Indigenous Engagement at the National Gallery of Australia. Bruce was formerly a Curator of Indigenous Australian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), where he curated many exhibitions about Indigenous contemporary art. 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, Bruce was awarded the National Aboriginal Youth of the Year; he is also a songman, dancer, and yiḏaki (didgeridoo) player.

EDSON KAYAPÓ
He is from the Megenbokré people. Curator-at-Large of Indigenous Art at MASP, Professor of the Indigenous Intercultural Degree at the Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia da Bahia (IFBA), a PhD in Education and a Certified Professor in the Postgraduate Program in Teaching and Ethnic-Racial Relations at the Universidade
Federal do Sul da Bahia (PPGER/UFSB).

FEDERICO CUATLACUATL
Born in 1991, Coapan, Cholula, Mexico. Federico's work is invested in disseminating topics of Nahua indigenous immigration, social art practice, and cultural sustainability. Building from his own experience growing up as an undocumented immigrant and previously holding DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), Federico’s creative practice centers on the intersectionality of indigeneity and immigration under a pressing Anthropocene. At the core of his most recent research and artistic production is the intersection of transborder indigeneity, migrant indigenous diasporas, and Nahua futurisms. 

GLICÉRIA TUPINAMBÁ
Glicéria is an Indigenous artist, activist, and educator from the Serra do Padeiro village, located in the Tupinambá Indigenous Land of Olivença, in the south of Bahia state. At the age of 39, she is intensely involved in the political and religious life of the Tupinambá people, especially on issues regarding education, the village’s productive organization, social services, and women’s rights. She was nominated for the Pipa 2022 award and is an active voice at the United Nations for the rights of Indigenous peoples.

IRENE SNARBY
PhD fellow at the Arctic University of Norway and a member of the research group Worlding Northern Art (WONA). 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.

JOCELYN PIIRAINEN
Inuk from Ikaluktutiak, Nunavut, Jocelyn is a newly appointed Associate Curator of Indigenous Ways and Decolonization at the National Gallery of Canada (2022), following her position at Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq as Associate Curator of Inuit Art. Piirainen’s curatorial collaborations include ᐊᖏᕐᕋᒧᑦ / Ruovttu Guvlui / Towards Home (2022), Canadian Centre of Architecture, Montreal; and Tunirrusiangit: Kenojuak Ashevak and Tim Pitsiulak (2018), Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. She has written for the magazines Canadian Art, Canadian Geographic, and the Inuit Art Quarterly.

KÁSSIA BORGES KARAJÁ
She studied Visual Arts at Universidade Federal de Uberlândia (UFU) and the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), has a PhD degree in Environmental Sciences and Sustainability in the Amazon from the Universidade Federal do Amazonas (UFAM), and a postgraduate degree in Political Philosophy from UFU. She is a specialized researcher in origin, women and ancestry at the Network for Environmental Studies in Portuguese-Speaking Countries (REALP) and an Associate Professor at Instituto de Artes da UFU. As a member of the collective Mahku, she has participated in many expositions, salons, and collections like Salão de Artes de Ribeirão Preto Nacional-Contemporâneo (SARP), Salão da Cidade de Porto Alegre, Salão Nacional Victor Meirelles, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS), Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Universidade Federal do Amazonas (UFAM), Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA), Haus der Kunst (Germany), Museum Tinguely (Switzerland), Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Goiânia, and MASP. She is a Curator at the Museu do Índio de Uberlândia, and Curator-at-Large of Indigenous Art at MASP, and a member of the Instituto Rouanet’s Council.

LENA STENBERG
Lena Stenberg grew up in a Sami reindeer herding community, with the world’s largest underground mine on their ancestral land. The land is heavily extracted, and this has affected the lives of her family and community. Stenberg works with tridimensional works, sculptural objects, installations and photography. The central themes in her art work are nature, culture, identity and questions of belonging. She is also interested in how the environment and landscape  shape people’s identity and how the history of places are connected with the present. Her artworks have often moved between historical reflections and contemporary political issues.

MELISSA CODY
Born in 1983 in Arizona, Melissa Cody is a member of the Navajo Nation. In 2005, she received a Bachelor’s degree in Museum Studies and an AFA in Studio Art from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Cody’s work is a balance of tradition, history and the contemporary. Working on a traditional Navajo loom, Cody fuses classical patterns into intricate geometric overlays and tantalizing color ways. Her works are featured in a number of museum collections, including those of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, The Autry Museum of the American West, and the Stark Museum of Art, Orange, Texas. 

MICHELLE LAVALLEE
From the Anishinaabe-Ojibway people, Australia, Lavallee is a mother, a curator, and 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 several exhibitions including Radical Stitch (2022–2024); 7: Professional Native Indian Artists Inc. (2013–2016); Moving Forward, Never Forgetting (2015); and Blow Your House In: Vernon Ah Kee (2009).

NIGEL BORELL
He is of Pirirakau, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi, Te Whakatōhea Māori tribal descent. A writer specializing in Māori art, Borell is the Curator Taonga Māori at the Auckland War Memorial Museum, New Zealand. He was the curator of 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).

RENATA TUPINAMBÁ
Journalist, screenwriter, curator, producer, and artist. She has been working since 2005 in disseminating Indigenous cultures through projects. Her career has been marked by a devotion inspired by Indigenous art, cinema, and communication, as she develops pioneering work and transformative projects in this context. Founder of Originárias Produções, she was also co-founder and coordinator of Rádio Yandê, the first Brazilian Indigenous web radio. In 2022, she worked in the communication advisory of the Museu das Culturas Indígenas. In 2018, she created the Originárias Podcast, the first in Brazil of interviews with Indigenous artists, filmmakers, and musicians. Currently, she has been curating art, film, and music exhibitions and festivals, but also works as a screenwriter for series, documentaries, and films. She is also Curator-at-Large of Indigenous Art at MASP.

SANDRA GAMARRA
She studied Fine Arts at the Universidad Católica del Perú. In 2002, she 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.