Menire nhõ kubēkà ôk
Mebengokré women with their painted fabrics
The exhibition “Menire nhõ kubēkà ôk: Mebengokré women with their painted fabrics” presents the works of the menire, the Mebengokré-Xikrin Indigenous women from the Trincheira-Bacajá Indigenous Land in the Amazon. It has been conceptualised, curated, and created by menire from different villages, Ngrenhrarati; Irekenpo: Ireprin; Kokodjy; Ngrenhme; Kokoró; Nhoká; Ngrenhtuti; Nhaktyk. For the exhibition, they decided to present their body paintings in the format of textiles to allow non-indigenous people to know about their aesthetics and ethics, their culture, their kukradjà.
The Mebengokré-Xikrin express their social life with the use of body painting, which is an exclusively female and ongoing activity. Women always present themselves with one hand stained black with genipap, embodying their uses of this natural colour, and the other hand left uncoloured. This marks them as painters. They paint husband, children, and relatives at home, while among them, they do in public gatherings, joiing together in collective reciprocal painting sessions.
The paints are made from genipap and batprãam, a tree bark collected from the forest, which is burned to create charcoal. They open the genipaps with a machete, remove the pulp, and mix it with charcoal and sips of water held in the mouth and spat out, forming a black paste. This paste is applied to the hands, spread with a kyoky, a thin palm stick taken from the forest, and successively applied on the bodies.
Paintings are done periodically, whether for gatherings, rituals, welcoming guests into their homes, enhancing their appearance, or for death and war, among other reasons. The Mebengokré-Xikrin’s ability to extract from nature what alters their bodies marks their social identities and belonging. The black colour distinguishes them, while red represents the external world. Body painting is an activity focused on body modification, serving to beautify and protect against the sun and insect bites, and meanwhile it is a way to express the person’s position in the world and society; it is a form of expression.
In more recent years, the menire, the Mebengokré-Xikrin women, started to create painted fabrics in which they apply the patterns used in body painting. This activity enables them to disseminate their artworks as an act of resistance in face of the pressure they are suffering from the wider society. Affected by the socio-environmental modification caused by the Belo Monte Hydroelectric Dam, as well as by the persistent invisibilisation of five centuries of advancement of the frontier of colonisation on the Amazon Forest, they mobilise their social expression to gain visibility and voice. The paintings allow the menire to make their lives and presence visible and to affirm their social and cultural resistance.
This exhibition presents a collection of Mebengokré-Xikrin graphic designs painted on raw cotton fabric using black acrylic paint. Skilfully created by menire, these patterns which are traditionally applied on the bodies are now transferred to the textiles to make them visible to non-indigenous people. It’s concomitantly an act of creativity and of politic, of continuous actualisation of their lives and fights. These artworks are associated with photographs of each menire, in their houses and villages, with audios they recorded letting visitors to access their daily life of sociality, of care, and of resistance. It a sensory immersion into the world of Mebengokré-Xikrin graphics, where visualization, sound, and interpretation intertwine, offering a poetic experience that connects you to the forest’s traditions and stories in a unique and engaging way.
The exhibition results from a collaboration with the Department of Anthropology of the Faculty of science of Masaryk University, the Centro studi Americanistici “Circolo Amerindiano of Perugia in Italy, and with the Brazilian Embassy in Prague. The curatorship is by Paride Bollettin, Rochelle Foltram, and all the menire together. It is the result of a mutirão, a doing together that goes beyond the representation of the Mebengokré-Xikrin to allow them to self-present and to dialogue with the non-indigenous society. The exhibition will stand at the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University in Kotlářská 267/2, 611 37 Brno, Pavilion 02, from the 26th September 2024 to the end of the academic year in June 2025.
Ngrenhrarati - Potkrô
"Good afternoon, my name is Ngrenhrarati Xikrin, I am from from the Potkrô village. I am the representative of the œmenireœ of the Trincheira-Bacajá indigenous Land. Last month they indicated me as the leader of the women, of all of them. This is why I am the one presenting. I live in the Potkrô village. It is like this. Our project is to work with the babassu coconuts, to extract the oil. We sell it, and we also produce it for use in our houses. Moreover, we also use body painting so much. After we thought, we created a project on our body paintings, on its meaning. There is the painting of the tortoise, the is the painting of fish bones, there is the painting of the snake, all of them. All that regards the forest regards us too. This is because we do not want deforestation in our land. This is why we use our body painting; we present the animals in the forest as well as ourselves. This is our painting."
Kokoró - Pryndjãm
"This painting that I made is the wewenhõtí. The name of the painting is wewenhõtí"
"Wewenhõtí is the name of the painting, it means butterfly, which we call wewenhõtí. It is a drawing like this, with the wings. We call it wewenhõtí."
"We are painting this design wewenhõtí since a long time. Our grandmother that taught us this painting wewenhõtí. She was painting and also telling us the name. We followed on, since we should not forget. We like to paint."
Nhoká - Rápkô
Kokodjy - Mrõtidjãm
Ngrenhtuti - Pryndjãm
"Good morning, the name of the painting I drawn is ãirõtí, of the painting I did. I started to paint on the dolls, with my friend. Then I continued to paint, arrived the children and I painted also the children. In this way, I learned. Then I started with the fabrics, to paint on the fabrics. In the beginning, it was ugly, until it became beautiful. It was like this that I did for the first paintings."
Nhaktyk - Bacajá
Ngrenhme - Pryndjãm
"I have already explained my name and my village. I explained I made this painting of the tortoise. I was a child who did not know anything, then my mother was the one who explained and taught. In this way I learned how to do. The painting of the bags and of the fabrics. There are several paintings, which have names. The one I did is of the tortoise."
Paike - Mrõtidjãm
Ireprin - Rondjãm
“This painting is named wewenhõtí [butterfly]”
Irekenpo - Mrõtidjãm
"This painting is named kãngãótí [big snake]"
