Ka’a Pûera has a double meaning: it is both a space in the field and a bird camouflaging itself with the forest floor. This duplicity is essential to the concept of the Hãhãwpuá Pavilion (ancestral territory), which brings Brazil’s history of resistance to life through the works of Glicéria Tupinambá, Olinda Tupinambá, Ziel Karapotó, and the Tupinambá Community of the Serra do Padeiro and Olivença villages in Bahia. Glicéria Tupinambá summons the mantles of her people and forms Okará Assojaba, the council of listening elders. Produced after meetings with Grupo Atã, formed of Tupinambá youths and elders, Dobra do tempo infinito [Fold of Infinite Time] presents a video installation with trawling nets that form connections between their weaves and traditional costumes. Ziel Karapotó’s installation combines fired cartridges and maracas, confronting colonial processes, while Olinda Tupinambá amplifies the voice of Kaapora, a spiritual entity that watches over our relationship with the planet.

The exhibition is held in the year that one of the mantles returns to Brazil from Europe, where it has been since 1699, updating issues of colonization — and finding the Tupinambá and over 300 Indigenous peoples in Brazil who continue their struggles as Ka’a Pûera, birds that walk over resurgent forests.

Henry Borzi