The Yanomami Struggle

FEB 3 – APR 16, 2023
Art and activism in the Amazon

Tickets

Tickets are now available via the Get Tickets button at the top of this page.

Exhibition Tours

Exhibition tours with knowledgeable educators are free with admission to the exhibition and are available on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays:

Wednesdays at 12 pm, 2 pm, 4 pm
Fridays at 12 pm, 2 pm, 4 pm, 6 pm
Saturdays at 12 pm, 2 pm, 3 pm, 4 pm, 5 pm

Tours are first come, first served with admission to the exhibition.

Please note: Face masks are optional but strongly encouraged while in The Shed. This policy is subject to change. Please email info@theshed.org or call (646) 455-3494 if you have questions.

Installation view: The Yanomami Struggle, The Shed, New York, February 3 – April 16, 2023. Photo: Adam Reich. Courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain.
An art gallery with drawings and paintings on walls suspended from the ceiling and on fixed walls. The suspended walls make shadows of intersecting lines on the gray concrete floors. Situated prominently in the center of the gallery is a painting of three trees with yellow trunks and green canopies against a bright red background.
Installation view: The Yanomami Struggle, The Shed, New York, February 3 – April 16, 2023. Photo: Adam Reich. Courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain.
An art gallery with drawings and photos on walls and suspended from the ceiling. The suspended artworks make shadows of intersecting lines on the gray concrete floors. In the back of the gallery is a long wall painted black with a grid of black-and-white photo portraits of Yanomami subjects.
Claudia Andujar, [Collective house near the Catholic mission on the Catrimani River, Roraima state], 1976. Mineral pigment print (from infrared film). 35.8 x 55.1 inches (91 x 140 cm). Artwork © Claudia Andujar. Collection of the artist. Photo: Adam Reich. Courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain.
A photo suspended from the ceiling in an art gallery with other works in the background. The photo shows a forest from above with a clearing for a round communal house built by it Yanomami inhabitants, called a yano. The trees are an electric magenta color.
Claudia Andujar, [Funerary cocoon in the forest], 1976. Mineral pigment print (from infrared film). 55.7 x 36.4 inches (141.5 x 92.5 cm). Artwork © Claudia Andujar. Collection of the artist. Photo: Adam Reich. Courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain.
A photo suspended from the ceiling of an art gallery. The image is cast in a red-orange tone and shows a funerary bundle among trees in a forest.
Installation view: The Yanomami Struggle, The Shed, New York, February 3 – April 16, 2023. Photo: Adam Reich. Courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain.
An art gallery wall with a line of ten framed drawings in a row. To the right, a suspended walls holds a larger drawing of a tree with a red canopy.
Installation view: The Yanomami Struggle, The Shed, New York, February 3 – April 16, 2023. Photo: Adam Reich. Courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain.
An art gallery with drawings and paintings hanging on fixed walls and suspended panels hanging from the ceiling. A visitor walks away between two suspended panels. In the foreground, is a rectangular painting hung on a horizontal orientation. It depicts bold black shapes that recall a fallen tree branch and large leaves against a bright red background.
Installation view: The Yanomami Struggle, The Shed, New York, February 3 – April 16, 2023. Photo: Adam Reich. Courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain.

About this Exhibition

“Brazil’s Defender of the Indigenous Brings Their Fight to the Shed: Claudia Andujar has photographed the Yanomami in the Amazon during a lifetime of activism. At 91, she is still helping protect their rainforest homeland.”
—The New York Times

The Yanomami Struggle is a comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the collaboration and friendship between artist and activist Claudia Andujar and the Yanomami people, one of the largest Indigenous groups living in Amazonia today.

Following acclaimed presentations at the Instituto Moreira Salles (São Paulo), the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain (Paris), and the Barbican Centre (London), among other venues, the exhibition is expanded at The Shed to include more than 80 drawings and paintings by Yanomami artists André Taniki, Ehuana Yaira, Joseca Mokahesi, Orlando Nakɨ uxima, Poraco Hɨko, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, and Vital Warasi. Visitors will also encounter new video works by contemporary Yanomami filmmakers Aida Harika, Edmar Tokorino, Morzaniel Ɨramari, and Roseane Yariana.

These works are presented alongside more than 200 photographs by Claudia Andujar that trace the artist’s experiences with the Yanomami over five decades and continue to raise visibility for their struggle to protect their land, people, and culture. The dialogue established between the contemporary Yanomami artists’ work and Andujar’s photographs offers an unprecedented vision of Yanomami culture, society, and visual art. The works by these contemporary Yanomami artists are on view in New York for the first time at The Shed, bringing together the most extensive presentation of Yanomami art in the US to date.

Claudia Andujar was born in Switzerland in 1931 and raised in Transylvania before immigrating to New York City in 1946 after escaping the Holocaust. She first moved to Brazil in 1955, where she started a career as a photographer. For over five decades, Andujar has been collaborating with the Yanomami people in defense of their rights. The Yanomami Struggle tells the story of Andujar’s relationship with the Yanomami people during Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964 – 85), from their first encounter in 1971 to the transformation of her artistic practice into direct activism seven years later, when Andujar and other activists created the Commission for the Demarcation of the Yanomami Park (CCPY). Through the voice and guidance of shaman and leader Davi Kopenawa, the exhibition also narrates the Yanomami’s mythological origins and maps their cosmovision, politics, and social organization.

Kopenawa’s friendship with Andujar since the 1980s is central to her ongoing relationship with the Yanomami. Alongside many other activists and organizations, they have worked with Yanomami communities and leaders against the invasion of Yanomami land, a fight that led to the demarcation of a continuous Yanomami territory by the Brazilian government in 1992. The protection of the land was followed by important health and educational programs and the creation of different Yanomami associations. Despite this progress, the activism depicted in the exhibition is not relegated to the past. The invasion of their territory by illegal gold miners continues today, threatening both the Amazonian rainforest and the Yanomami.

Since the 2000s, a new generation of Yanomami artists have begun producing and showcasing their work outside of the region, establishing a new perspective that is now incorporated into the exhibition. This multilayered story also includes the contributions of several other individuals and organizations, including Hutukara Associação Yanomami, Instituto Socioambiental, anthropologist Bruce Albert (Fondation Cartier’s consultant and co-author with shaman Davi Kopenawa of The Falling Sky), and Italian missionary Carlo Zacquini.

The Yanomami Struggle is curated by Thyago Nogueira, Head of Contemporary Photography at Instituto Moreira Salles, São Paulo, Brazil (IMS), with Valentina Tong (assistant curator), and organized by IMS, the Fondation Cartier, and The Shed in partnership with the Brazilian NGOs Hutukara Associação Yanomami and Instituto Socioambiental.

The exhibition is supported by

Additional Resources

Learn more about the artists, the exhibition, and the fight for Indigenous rights and sovereignty in Yanomami territory and worldwide with these additional resources.
Learn more

About the Artists

A portrait of artist Claudia Andujar. A white Brazilian woman, Claudia has brown hair in a short bob. She wears a fuzzy sweater and leans her head on one hand, looking away in three quarters view.
Courtesy Claudia Andujar.
Claudia Andujar
A portrait of shaman and Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa. An Indigenous Yanomami man sitting in front of a wide tree trunk and lush leaves and other undergrowth. He wears a white t-shirt, a green ribbon around his neck and an array of red and orange feathers across his forehead.
Courtesy Instituto Socioambiental.
Davi Kopenawa
A portrait of artist Aida Harika. An Indigenous Yanomami woman with shoulder-length straight dark hair, Aida wears a thin choker and stands in front of a background of lush green leaves and trees.
Photo: Marília Garcia Senlle.
Aida Harika
A portrait of artist Edmar Tokorino. An Indigenous Yanomami man, Edmar wears a wine-colored shirt and smiles with his mouth slightly cracked open. He stands against a background of overlapping, dried leaves that recalls a thatched roof or wall.
Photo: Marília Garcia Senlle.
Edmar Tokorino
A portrait of artist Ehuana Yaira. An Indigenous Yanomami woman, Ehuana is seen from the shoulders up. She wears a garment whose green and yellow straps cross over her chest and around her neck. She has dark hair in straight bangs across her forehead. She has a long, straight piercing through the septum of her nose and wears a blue flower in her hair tucked behind either ear.
Courtesy Instituto Socioambiental.
Ehuana Yaira
A portrait of artist Joseca Mokahesi. An Indigenous Yanomami man seen in three quarter view in an empty white gallery space. He wears a black blazer with a red ribbon around his neck. He has short dark hair and his face is painted with red lines at the top of his cheekbones.
Photo: Michel Slomka.
Joseca Mokahesi
A portrait of artist Morzaniel Iramari. An Indigenous Yanomami man, Morzaniel is seen in a close-up of his face. He has short, dark hair and smiles broadly without opening his mouth and has a band of red paint across his eyes and accenting his cheeks.
Courtesy Instituto Socioambiental.
Morzaniel Ɨramari
A portrait of artist Roseane Yariana. An Indigenous Yanomami woman, Roseane has straight dark hair to her shoulders. She is seen in a close up on her face against a background of green leaves illuminated by sunlight. Her face is painted with red designs on her cheeks and temples. She looks pensively beyond the camera.
Photo: Aruac Filmes.
Roseane Yariana
A portrait of Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe. An Indigenous Yanomami man, Sheroanawe poses in front of a gallery wall with numerous of his framed drawings. He wears a black puffer vest, a teal t-shirt, and a long beaded necklace that hags down nearly to his waist. He has short cropped dark hair and wears round-frame glasses.
Artwork © Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe. Courtesy Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain. Photo: Michel Slomka.
Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe
Claudia Andujar
Claudia Andujar was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland in 1931 and grew up in Transylvania. During the Second World War, Claudia’s father, who was Jewish, was deported to Dachau where he was killed along with most of her paternal relatives. Andujar fled with her mother to Switzerland, immigrated first to the United States in 1946, then to Brazil in 1955 where she began a career as a photojournalist before becoming an activist. She is 92 years old, currently lives in São Paulo, and dedicates most of her time to the Yanomami cause.
Davi Kopenawa
Davi Kopenawa (b. ca. 1956, Mõra mahi araopë community, Marakana region) is a shaman and the main spokesperson for the Brazilian Yanomami, advocating for their rights and territory. His mother died from a measles epidemic brought to his community by American New Tribes missionaries, who also gave him his Christian name Davi. Kopenawa (whose chosen Yanomami name derives from the kopena wasp) left the Yanomami territory to work for non-Indigenous people in his youth. At the age of 15, he started to work for the Brazilian National Foundation for Indigenous People (FUNAI), a federal agency for Indigenous people, as a guide and translator. In the 1970s, he moved back to his community. Since the 1980s, Kopenawa has been traveling the world to advocate for the legal recognition of his territory and the protection of his people. He is one of the most important Indigenous leaders in Latin America. His words gained a new international audience with the publication of the seminal The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman (co-authored with anthropologist Bruce Albert, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013), for which he developed the drawings shown in the exhibition. His words and quotes from the book appear throughout this exhibition.
Aida Harika
Aida Harika (b. 1998, Watorikɨ [Demini]) and Edmar Tokorino (b. 1986, Watorikɨ [Demini]) live in the village of Watorikɨ. They are part of a Yanomami media collective initiated in 2018 by Hutukara Associação Yanomami, with support from Instituto Socioambiental. Since 2021, Harika and Tokorino have participated in several workshops to produce videos and short films, reflecting a growing interest in media technologies. The first two short films they co-directed are shown here for the first time.
André Taniki
André Taniki (b. ca. 1945, Okarasipëki) was almost 30 years old when he made the drawings included in the exhibition. He lived for a time in Manihi pi village and moved to Xaxanapi, which was his wife’s village. A young shaman from a very isolated village with a constant smile, he was always attentive to the world around him and full of curiosity. He now lives with his wife, children, and numerous grandchildren in Nãra uhi on the Arapari River (a tributary of the Catrimani River).
Edmar Tokorino
Aida Harika (b. 1998, Watorikɨ [Demini]) and Edmar Tokorino (b. 1986, Watorikɨ [Demini]) live in the village of Watorikɨ. They are part of a Yanomami media collective initiated in 2018 by Hutukara Associação Yanomami, with support from Instituto Socioambiental. Since 2021, Harika and Tokorino have participated in several workshops to produce videos and short films, reflecting a growing interest in media technologies. The first two short films they co-directed are shown here for the first time.
Ehuana Yaira
Ehuana Yaira (b. 1984, Watorikɨ [Demini]) is an artist and researcher. She is the first known Yanomami woman to become a teacher in the region and to write a book in Yanomae, her own language. Her research on the transformation of the rituals around a young woman’s first period was published as Written Words on Menstruation (2017). She has also researched and illustrated books about traditional Yanomami medicines and languages. In 2018, she coordinated the 11th Annual Yanomami Women Event. She was the protagonist of A Film for Ehuana (Louise Botkay, 2018) and interpreter for the feature film The Last Forest (Luiz Bolognesi, 2021). Yaira is one of the few Yanomami women to draw on paper, making her an innovator for a new generation. Her drawings are usually densely colored and depict the daily activities of women. Her work has been exhibited by the Fondation Cartier in Paris (2019), Shanghai (2021), and Lille, France (2022), and will be shown in Milan in 2023. This is her first exhibition in North America.
Joseca Mokahesi
Joseca Mokahesi (b. 1971, Watorikɨ [Demini]) is an employee at Brazil’s Federal Indigenous health agency and an artist. He was the first language scholar, teacher, and health agent of his community. He has produced and illustrated Yanomami-Portuguese publications for educational and health programs. He began drawing and woodcarving in the early 2000s. Not a shaman himself, Mokahesi usually draws the xapiri (a shaman’s spirit helpers) in their human and animal forms based on the visions narrated to him by shamans. His drawings depict a story that is invisible to non-shamans with the intention of sharing and promoting the Yanomami cosmovision. Since 2003, Mokahesi’s work has been exhibited in many art institutions in Brazil and abroad. His work has been exhibited by the Fondation Cartier in Paris (2012 and 2019), Shanghai (2021), London (2022), and Lille, France (2022), and will be shown in Milan in 2023. In 2022, his first solo exhibition, Our Earth-Land (Kami yamak-i urihipë), opened at Museu de Arte de São Paulo. He lives in Watorikɨ with his wife and five children. This is his first exhibition in North America.
Morzaniel Ɨramari
Morzaniel Ɨramari (b. 1980, Watorikɨ [Demini]) is an interpreter and one of the first Yanomami artists working in cinema. He was trained as a filmmaker through the Video nas Aldeias (Video in the Communities) project, a groundbreaking initiative to strengthen Indigenous rights through audiovisual production. His first short film, House of Spirits (co-directed with Dario Kopenawa), was made in 2010. The feature film Earth-Forest Shamans (2014) won the award for Best Film at the Forumdoc.BH festival. He has participated in the 4th Week of Directors in Rio de Janeiro (2014) and in the Biennial of Indigenous Cinema in São Paulo (2016). He has coordinated communications for Hutukara Associação Yanomami. He has participated in the filming of the feature The Falling Sky (to be released), directed by Eryk Rocha and Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha and based on the book by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert.
Orlando Nakɨ uxima
Orlando Nakɨ uxima (b. ca. 1958, Haranari u, Demini region; d. 1977, Manihi pi) was 17 years old when he made the drawings included in this exhibition. He lived at Manihi pi on the Jundiá River (a tributary of the Catrimani River). As a child, his father was captured by inhabitants from the Catrimani River during an attack against the Yawari, an isolated Yanomami group from the other side of the river. He died after contracting measles.
Poraco Hɨko
Poraco Hɨko (b. ca. 1905, Xihopi,Toototobi region; d. 1990, Wakatha u, Catrimani mission) lived in Xaxanapi on the Jundiá River (a tributary of the Catrimani River) until around the beginning of the 1970s. He left his village to live in Wakatha u, his wife’s village near the Catrimani mission. He enjoyed telling stories of the old times with humor and wisdom. He died from pneumonia He was around 70 years old when he made the drawings included in the exhibition.
Roseane Yariana
Roseane Yariana (b. 1999, Watorikɨ [Demini]) is also part of a Yanomami media collective initiated in 2018 by Hutukara Associação Yanomami, with support from Instituto Socioambiental. She lives in Buriti village and is the daughter of artist Joseca Mokahesi, whose work is also included in this exhibition. The three filmmakers participated in the filming of the feature The Falling Sky (to be released), directed by Eryk Rocha and Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha and based on the book by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert.
Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe
Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe (b. 1971). Since the mid-1990s, Hakihiiwe has been working to preserve the traditions of Platanal, his Yanomami community in the Upper Orinoco River region in Venezuela. His drawings and paintings in The Yanomami Struggle establish an original dialogue with his Brazilian peers. At the same time, they offer a contemporary re-envisioning of the forest and its living creatures as well as of the Yanomami graphic tradition that combines ancient knowledge with acute observation of the natural world. Hakihiiwe’s work, recently shown at the Venice Biennale, celebrates collective knowledge and echoes the fight of other Yanomami artists to make their way of life visible and respected.
Vital Warasi
Vital Warasi (b. ca. 1915, Poripotha; d. 1988, Iropi, Catrimani) was a respected shaman and the leader in his community on the Lobo D’Almada River (a tributary of the Catrimani River). He was around 60 years old when he made the drawings included in the exhibition. Between 1976 and 1977, he saw his relatives and friends fall ill and die from a measles epidemic. He died of malaria.

Related Programs

Public Programs: Indigenous Rights, Art, and Environmental Justice

FEB 4, MAR 4, APR 8 & 15, 2023

Selected Works in the Exhibition

Location, dates, and hours

This event takes place in Level 2 Gallery.

Exhibition Hours

Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday 11 am – 6 pm
Friday, 11 am – 8 pm

Exhibition Tour Hours

Exhibition tours with knowledgeable educators are free with admission to the exhibition and are available on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays:

Wednesdays at 12 pm, 2 pm, 4 pm
Fridays at 12 pm, 2 pm, 4 pm, 6 pm
Saturdays at 12 pm, 2 pm, 3 pm, 4 pm, 5 pm

Tours are first come, first served with admission to the exhibition.

The Shed is located at 545 West 30th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues. For information about accessibility and arriving at The Shed, visit our Accessibility page.

Thank you to our partners

The creation of new work at The Shed is generously supported by the Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Commissioning Fund and the Shed Commissioners.

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In The Works