Download and view the Womb of the Earth: Cosmovision of the Rainforest Catalog

Womb of the Earth: Cosmovision of the Rainforest gives Brazilian Indigenous female artists an opportunity to share their art with a wider audience and to voice their concern about challenges their communities face. These artists live in the Amazon and Atlantic Rainforest, and unlike their urban artist peers, they don’t have access to art galleries or museums. Their artworks illustrate threats to their life, culture, and homeland through deforestation, illegal mining, agriculture and infrastructure developments, violations of cultural rights, and lack of access to justice. Womb of the Earth explores these communities’ cosmovision, the importance of Brazil’s rainforests (one of the world’s most biodiverse regions) for area communities’ physical and cultural survival, as well as the role of female artists in the struggle to preserve their homeland. The exhibition is co-curated by Brazilian Indigenous curator Cristine Takuá (Maxakali) and artist/curator Anita Ekman, in consultation with Sandra Benites (Guarani Nhandeva), and introduces three Indigenous female artist collectives. Among them are Assurini (Awaete) artists, who render traditional female body painting patterns in acrylic on fabric. What unites many of these artworks is the artists’ interest in the close relationship between the human body/soul and surrounding nature, expressed through paintings, ceramics, and fiber art. In many Brazilian Indigenous cultures’ belief systems, the rainforest is the origin of life on earth—protecting it is a key subject in these women’s art.

Scholarly essays analyzing Womb of the Earth: Cosmovision of the Rainforest is published in the Womb of the Earth: Cosmovision of the Rainforest Catalog.

For more information, please contact IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) Chief Curator Manuela Well-Off-Man at manuela.well-off-man@iaia.edu.