Zahy Guajajara
“Screens Series”
New York, 235 Bowery
Zahy Guajajara (b. 1989, Cana Brava, Maranhão, Brazil) is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker, actor, and activist from the Tentehar-Guajajara people. Interweaving dialogue in her first language, Ze’eng Eté—a dialect of the Tupi-Guarani trunk—and Portuguese, Guajajara’s video works examine contemporary indigenous identities and experiences amidst ongoing struggles for land rights and against ecological exploitation in the aftermath of colonial invasion.
Her performances for the camera, Pytuhem (2020) and Aiku’è zepé (I still r-exist) (2021), were made in collaboration with Mariana Villas-Bôas. They convey the artist’s (re)connection with nature and the assertion of indigenous peoples’ ancestral land claims in the context of targeted killings of members of the Guardians of the Forest, a group of Guajajaras in the state of Maranhão resisting the attempted occupation of their territory.
Tackling issues of hybridity, assimilation, autonomy, and techno-centric civilization, Guajajara’s Karaiw a’e wà (The Civilized) (2022) considers Indigenous Futurism as a methodology for countering the historical erasure of indigenous knowledge, technologies, and creative forms.
