André Taniki is a shaman born in the region of the Upper Catrimani river, in the Brazilian Amazon. His artistic output is directly linked to his association with artist and photographer Claudia Andujar and anthropologist Bruce Albert. These drawings by Taniki were done in the late 1970s, in conversation with Bruce Albert, when both were searching for ways to depict shamanic visions. Lushly coloured, the drawings combine abstractions and figurative schemata in structures that seem to represent the organisation of the cosmos from the point of view of the Yanomamis’ sense-universe. Thus, they may be observed as a kind of cartography of that which is visible only to the xapiri – the Yanomami shaman’s auxiliary spirits – and to the shamans themselves. Both the circumstances in which they came to being as well as the drawings themselves stand as relevant expressions of the possibilities of translation and communication between different systems of knowledge and relations.
This is the first time the work of André Taniki Yanomami is presented at Biennale Arte.
—David Ribeiro
