Tandó

from tan, rain

dó, lightning = Rainbow

I gave her the name Candida

Candida Tandó. She accepted it but

would not be baptized. 1903

From the notes of Romário Martins

Among the hundreds of photographs that belong to the Museu Paranaense permanent collection, the photo painting Untitled — of unknown authorship and made in the early 20th century — was the trigger for the conversations held in the project “A return to the image”. Throughout the meetings that took place between August and November of 2021, indigenous artists Denilson Baniwa and Gustavo Caboco correlated the image to nowadays context, which has been highlighting by several indigenous demonstrations against “marco temporal” (time frame), a new legislative assault over tribal lands. Combining the elements rain and lightning, Tandó means rainbow — suggesting that even turbulent times can bring some positive surprises. Another reflection generated by the photo painting refers to the apparent display of discomfort by the figure/character, demonstrated by the way she wraps her arms around her body and by the expression on her face. Together with this image come a few others. The portrait of a Xavante man. A scene with the unsettling caption “As the Indian climbs the pine tree to gather pine nuts”. Another with three seated Xetá people and the old aquarium of Curitiba’s Passeio Público in the background. Images and captions like these mobilized Museum staff and artists to think about the context in which the photos were taken and the feelings of those whom they portrayed, as well as of those who became their spectators.

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The Museu Paranaense has been speaking about a wide range of indigenous peoples- Karajá, Xetá, Bororo, Laklãño-Xokleng – for 145 years. This means 145 years of informing different generations about where and how native peoples live, what languages they speak and how they adorn themselves. These photographs, done by museum staff and other photographers, come from different moments of the 20th century, yet all take the premises of human “civilizing processes” as their basis. Such is the model that these (manipulated) images of indigenous bodies provide testimony of, whether moving closer to or taking their distance from it: iconographic constructions fashioned either to prove the collapse of peoples and cultures in the face of western homogenization, or to prove their “savagery”. Did these objects, exhibited within diverse contexts, help to humanize or to reinforce stereotypes about being indigenous?

The project, “A return to the image” is a part of our institution’s efforts to do things differently: to promote the encounter between Indigenous peoples and these images, hearing what reactions it provokes, and from there assume a new posture regarding our permanent collection and our exhibition practices. It means a turn to displaying and speaking about this collection with indigenous peoples.

The impulse to rummage through the “dusty drawers” of museums such as ours comes from the forceful activities of contemporary Indigenous artists in Brazil who, bringing archives and collections into their own work, demonstrate a will to rewrite history. Engaging with what Achille Mbembe indicates as places that preserve “fragments of lives and pieces of time, shadows and footprints inscribed on paper”, these artists claim autonomy in discourse about themselves and their peoples.

The exhibition “A Return to the Image” features a set of artistic creations done on panels and walls, during the face-to-face encounter of Caboco and Baniwa. It also includes the participation of other indigenous agencys: Camila dos Santos and Thais Krīg (Kanhgág), Indiamara and Nicolas Paraná (Xetá), Juliana Kerexu, Ricardo Werá, Flávio Karai and Elida Yry (Mbyá-Guarani) and Lucilene Wapichana (Wapichana) in November 2021. At the center of the room are some of the photographs from the collection, which, mirrored by the artists’ works, are transformed: they introduce other inscriptions, words, names, as well as proximity with different elements, enabling other readings. In addition to the current exhibition, the project envisions another phase and in it, an online publication, scheduled for March 2022.

Institutions such as the Museu Paranaense which have contributed to the constitution of a colonial logic that objectifies subaltern bodies – of Black and Indigenous peoples – must now take on the task of assisting in undoing these patterns.

Giselle de Moraes and Josiéli Spenassatto