![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/revistazum.com.br\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/DSC-6715_WEB.png?ssl=1\")
<\/a>Born in the indigenous territory of Porto Lindo in 1975 in the municipality of Japor\u00e3, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Sandra Ara Benites has a long history in education. She was a teacher, and worked in the administration of public education in Mato Grosso do Sul, Santa Catarina and Rio de Janeiro, reflecting, researching, and writing essays on the challenges facing indigenous education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We worked together on the exhibition Dja Guata Por\u00e3 \u2013 Rio de Janeiro ind\u00edgena<\/em> [Dja Guata Por\u00e3 \u2013 Indigenous Rio de Janeiro], organized by Jos\u00e9 Ribamar Bessa and Pablo Lafuente at the Museu de Arte do Rio in 2017 and 2018. Since then, we have shared an interest in bringing together, bewildering and developing the relationship between curatorial and educational practices. In the first half of 2022, we began putting together the group Retomadas<\/em> [re-takes] for the exhibition Hist\u00f3rias Brasileiras<\/em> [Brazilian stories] in MASP (Museu de Arte de S\u00e3o Paulo), which was under the overall direction of Adriano Pedrosa and Lilia M. Schwarcz and the collaboration of many other curators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In May, we decided to cancel the project, after MASP vetoed the inclusion of six photographs by Edgar Kanayk\u00f5 Xakriab\u00e1, Andr\u00e9 Vilaron and Jo\u00e3o Zinclar who document the struggle of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra [landless rural workers movement] (MST) and indigenous movements against the colonial looting and unequal distribution of agricultural land in Brazil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What happened from then on \u2013 a public debate and a struggle until the group was reinstated in the exhibition, this time including the photographs \u2013 is here the guiding thread for a reflection on what the images may teach \u2013 and what perhaps they cannot teach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sandra, is there a term in Guarani for \u201cimage\u201d?<\/strong> We also have nera\u2019anga<\/em>, which means a thing that is no longer, as if it were a shadow or a replica \u2013 images of you that are not you in reality. Nera\u2019anga<\/em> can be a reflection, a photograph or a drawing produced without the presence of the person depicted. Therefore, it indicates something that no longer is related to what is represented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ta\u2019anga<\/em> and nera\u2019anga<\/em> convey this idea of an image that is emptied of truth. We think that producing an image may empty someone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the Guarani\u2019s perception, which is revealed in the meaning of these words, is that someone may want to be you and, in order to do that, steals your image. Nowadays, on the other hand, having an image captured is important because the memory of photography serves as proof, as a complaint. We, the Guarani, use photography as a weapon in our struggle. On the other hand, the image can be dangerous in other situations, because photographing can be a way to take the place of the person represented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These two terms, ta\u2019anga<\/em> and nera\u2019anga<\/em>, come from a\u2019anga<\/em>, which in turn comes from angue<\/em>, which means \u201csoul that no longer exists\u201d. For us, angue<\/em> is as if it were your trail. It\u2019s no longer you. It may be something you left or something that comes from the place where you lived. But it is only a trace of your presence, not your spirit. For the Guarani, the spirit and the soul are not the same thing. The spirit, inhe\u2019\u02dce gue<\/em>, is true, it is a being that can exist even without a body, without producing traces of its presence. Angue<\/em> is not the spirit, but its emptied image. It is a kind of \u201csoul\u201d, the trace of a presence that no longer exists \u2013 a presence that may even be invisible. Angue<\/em> is a kind of ghost, shadow, the trace of someone. Images are a kind of ghosts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n Then how do we deal with the images from the Guarani\u2019s perspective?<\/strong> At one point, a young man mentioned that he was thinking of putting some photographs of a xe ram\u00f5e<\/em> (\u201celderly man\u201d) and of an elderly lady who had died on display in the museum, as a form of tribute. But the older women in the group, who were taking part of the conversation, were against it. They did not want the images of xe ram\u00f5e<\/em> or xe xajaryi<\/em> (\u201celderly\/old woman\u201d), already deceased, to be displayed in the museum because, for the Guarani, the image that should remain is not the photograph, but the essence of what the person did in life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we want to remember someone who has gone, we talk about the person\u2019s spirit. We speak about their way of being, about what they did. We discuss why they were good, and what they did to be remem- bered. We speak of the person: not of an im- age that was done and is a souvenir, because, for the Guarani, a photograph is a memory without spirit. And for us, what is important is the spirit of memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This spirit of memory is sacred because it brings, at the same time, the pains of the struggle and challenges that these people lived on Earth, but also the teachings that they brought to the community. Despite bringing sadness, memory is sacred, be- cause it is learning. And what it teaches is not the photograph as such, but the collec- tive memory of the lives represented by the images, who the people and their journeys were.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To be ancestral, the person has to be constantly remembered, brought back to presence, summoned in stories, in conversations, in rites. Ancestry is a condition that is produced every day. The ancestral is continually being created, like what happens to the \u201cclassics\u201d of the juru\u00e1<\/em> (\u201cnon-indigenous\u201d) world in an uninterrupted process of canonization through education, media, science, and symbols.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n When you talk about the elderly lady\u2019s concern, I get the feeling that she was attentive to the risk of the image \u2013 and, in particular, photography \u2013 acting against the process of ancestry. For when one believes that someone\u2019s spirit has been captured in an image, one becomes bound to a past memory of this spirit, preventing it from living vividly in the present on which it depends to become an ancestor.<\/strong> We can say that ara ym\u00e3<\/em> has to do with the past time, and ara pyau<\/em> with the new time, the future. For the Guarani, the old and the new do not form a linear sequence. These times occur in cycles, as with the periods of the year, which are continually starting over again. In these cycles, at various moments, ara ym\u00e3<\/em> and ara pyau<\/em> approach and meet. The two times flow, move. The past and the future are not fixed places in time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n They are not even still in space…<\/strong> It\u2019s not a place, is it? It\u2019s a position.<\/strong> The past also moves with the body. So, if you have a memory that is important and must not be forgotten, you need to carry it forward. You can\u2019t just capture the memory. You need to keep it close to you, move it ahead with your body. The past is also a journey. That is why memories \u2013 both new and old \u2013 need to walk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The movement of walking wakes up memory. We need to wake up our memories. But what is very important to understand is that waking them up is to be in agreement with them, since their place is the body itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This happened with the photographs of the landless rural workers movement in Hist\u00f3rias brasileiras<\/em>, at MASP: we woke up the MST memory, but we had to be in agreement with it. We had to honor the fighting spirit represented in the photographs so as not to empty them politically. It was this commitment that led us to cancel the Retomadas<\/em> group when the museum prohibited the presence of the images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To keep that fight awake at MASP, we had to be in agreement with the confrontation that it demanded of us now. Only in this way can we walk with these memories, building a future in which they can keep their fighting spirit alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You mentioned the two central aspects of our conversations around the photographs of Andr\u00e9 Vilaron, Jo\u00e3o Zinclar and Edgar Kanayk\u00f5 Xakriab\u00e1 in the Retomadas<\/em> group: the fight and the journey. We arrived at these six photographs from the idea of a march, researching the iconography of marches, such as those historical MST ones. When the images were vetoed, we refused to stop them. We do not accept that they could not be part of the march, that they could not move ahead, go public, be in the museum and seed the world from there too. When we confronted the veto, the images continued their journey.<\/strong> When we resisted the veto, the images moved much more. In addition to being in the exhibition and catalog, they moved into the newspapers, became posters, spread rapidly through social media. And so they got us to move, didn\u2019t they? We move with them. It seems that there is an ethical and political reciprocity in the relationship with images. To wake them up, we need to be in agree- ment with them, as you say so beautifully. To move them, we need to move ourselves.<\/strong> The question is not if they are good or bad photographs, as the museum claimed and some others, too, trying to legitimize the veto, arguing that the MST and Kanayk\u00f5 images would not be \u201cart\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n And, in response to the assumption that only a few images can be \u201cgood art\u201d, we question in return: \u201cThis image is good for what? Good for whom?\u201d It\u2019s not a question of aesthetic relativism. It is about political use. If we want to dismantle the servitude that constitutes colonialism, we need to question for what and to whom the images serve. Their servility cannot be disguised by aesthetic approaches. Not even aesthetics should make them servile. It is important to face head-on the discomfort of thinking critically about our artistic practices. In the end, who do the images we produce and legitimize serve?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Because an image can be used for good and evil. What, then, would be the power of these images?<\/strong> It is difficult for us to find spaces to show the perspectives of the social struggles, because what we want to show is frequently not received well, although we are showing reality. The images have an impact, and people retreat from the impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The images we have shown at MASP are not as shocking as, for example, the photographs in the Figueiredo Report, a set of horrendous images which document the crimes committed against indigenous people during the military regime. The photos in the report are extremely shocking because they reveal how inhumanly we were treated. Because they are so traumatic, they cannot be shown anywhere, so they are not even discussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These shocking photographs do not circulate. Only a few researchers or those who are interested in them know these images. That is why it is so important to show images of our struggles. And, in the face of denial, we need to prepare the territory to show them. That is what we did with Retomadas<\/em>: we prepared the ground with newspapers, posters, speeches, works, showing not only the context of the struggles, but also the ways in which the images circulate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We, indigenous people and people in the social movements, always need to prepare the public, because many people do not want to receive images that speak of concerns and break the silence. The media keeps erasing our images, realities and voices, cutting out small parts of our struggle, leaving visible only what the interests of the powerful accept to be shown. It is essential to be able to display our images in art exhibitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Xadalu Tup\u00e3<\/em>, for example, with his silk screen images of indigenous carrancas [figureheads on river craft] exhibited at the Museum of Indigenous Cultures, talks about digging up heads. He talks about the city that is above us, as if all the villages were buried under the city. These images, when they are reproduced and thought about in another way, cause impact. That makes me very emotional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Seeing the photographs of Vilaron, Zinclar and Kanayk\u00f5, I feel as if I\u2019m inside those marches. And then we ask ourselves: who benefits from these memories not being seen, talked about, revived? And how to take back images that have been captured?<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n
There is. It\u2019s ta\u2019anga<\/em>, a word that means \u201csomething captured\u201d and, because of that, has become an image that is not true, that is not the thing itself. A photograph or a drawn figure can be ta\u2019anga<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a>
Recently, in the village of Pico do Jaragu\u00e1, in Sao Paulo, I was having a conversation with relatives who are thinking about the types of presence and representation of the Gua- rani in the Museum of Indigenous Cultures, where I work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This has to do with the way we, the Guarani, understand time, which for us is the ara pyau<\/em> (\u201cnew time\u201d) and the ara ym\u00e3<\/em> (\u201cold time\u201d). We have no present time. The \u201cpres- ent\u201d is the moment, not a chronological interval. What we have is the moment of now and times that come and go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a>
Exactly. That is why we say that we are moving toward the future, which we call tenond\u00e9<\/em>. What is tenond\u00e9<\/em>? It is \u201cin front of you\u201d. That\u2019s when you go walking, go forward. This \u201cforward\u201d, which is only yours, is the tenond\u00e9<\/em>. The future moves along with you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yes, because the future is the body walking, moving ahead of you. To walk is not to predict the path ahead, but to prepare the body for the journey. This is important because, in your journey, if you find something that is not good, you can prepare to leave this place, to take other paths and not harm yourself. The future is a process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As my relatives said, when you take a photograph, it is as if you have also captured the spirit of the photographed person. But the spirit is not that frozen image, it is precisely the movement. That is why it is important to move the images, so as not to disrespect the spirits of the people or the struggles they represent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s it. Especially these photographs, which are images of struggle. They are provocative \u2013 they cause movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a>
This is very important to me because these photographs represent a lot of struggle. They are documents and instruments of struggle. When I started looking at the photographs of the marches, the demonstrations, I soon came to the memories of the leaders who were assassinated in the process of confrontation and resistance. That touched me. We needed to show this, because the lives of these people are not yet taken into account in Brazil. I experience this pain every day. And who does that knows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n