Conclusions: Being Indigenous, Being There

Summary

The opening weekend of the ‘AEI’ exhibition was an intense experience for all involved, but ultimately it was of limited duration. On the Sunday afternoon all those who had come from their Indigenous villages to be present packed up the arts and crafts that they had not managed to sell, their musical instruments and personal effects, and headed home. It left the exhibition in the chapel looking very bare (see figs 29–30). While a second group of Indigenous exhibitors would be present to curate the closing weekend, a month later, in the interim the exhibition was just the ten artworks that appear in the catalogue, overseen by two non-Indigenous attendants who had been trained up over the opening weekend to try to facilitate interaction and contextualisation in the absence of the Indigenous exhibitors. Although Anna Campagnac confirmed that a few photographs would subsequently be added to the exhibition to fill the visible gaps and provide more context for the exhibits, as Tawanã Kariri-Xocó commented in interview, it was like offering an experience of ‘nosso gesto sem a escuta’ [being seen but not heard]. Equally, Yarú Tupinambá stated,

Sinceramente, eu vou ser um pouco direito, acho que independentemente dos trabalhos estarem lá, eu tenho a certeza que não vai ser a mesma coisa, entendeu. Eu acho que agora o povo vai olhar e [dizer] ‘Foi um indígena que fez isto’, mas não vai ter o mesmo impacto, o mesmo sentido, entendeu. Eu acho que com a gente lá, com nós indígenas presentando os nossos próprios trabalhos, eu acho que teria um impacto maior, eu acho que as pessoas [diriam] ‘Nossa, foi ele que fez, foi [aqu]ele indígena mesmo que fez o trabalho’… . Nada melhor que o indígena que fez o trabalho para explicar.

[Honestly, I’m going to be straight with you, I think that even though the artworks are still there, I’m sure it won't be the same thing, you know. I think that now people will look at them and say ‘It was an Indigenous person who did this’, but it won't have the same impact, the same meaning, you know.