To-and-Fro

Mineral printing with pigmented ink on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta 315g paper

81 x 108 cm

Untitled 1, from the Toototobi series, 2010

Claudia Andujar

Mineral printing with pigmented ink on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta 315g paper

81 x 108 cm

Claudia Andujar (Switzerland, 1931) migrated to São Paulo in 1957. In 1970, she joined a group of photographers who produced an extensive report on the Amazon region, where the artist spent five years living among the Yanomami people. That remarkable experience became a cornerstone in her trajectory: the life of the Yanomami turned out to be the main topic of her work as a photographer and of her political activism, both fields merging as one in her life. Her pictures show hammocks as a constitutive element in the lives of the indigenous people of the Catriamani region, in the Brazilian state of Roraima. Hammocks are used both inside the malocas (indigenous housing) and throughout the rainforest. Their use, either by individuals or by the entire community, creates a time/ space for rest or leisure. Hammocks also have an important role in care and healing procedures. Among the pictures displayed, the most recent one registers the hammocks used in the 4th Yanomami Association Hutukara Meeting, in Toototobi, in the Brazilian state of Amazonas.

Drawings series in Canson paper and Posca uni-ball pen

29,7 x 42 cm

The Transformations of the Creator Temerõ and His Twin Brother Laposié Who Speak of the Cotton in Our Cosmology, 2019

Yermollay Caripoune

Drawings series in Canson paper and Posca uni-ball pen

29,7 x 42 cm

Yermollay Caripoune (Adamnã—Drawn Painted Written) lives in the Oiapoque region, between the state of Amapá and the border of French Guiana. His research explores the relationships and dissentions between scientific and traditional knowledges. In this series of drawings, the artist presents a Caripuna narrative about the origins of the hammock. According to it, the Caripuna people used to live unclothed. There was a husband and wife that lived on Mount Taminã and grew all varieties of plants in their small land. When the wife became pregnant, her husband handcrafted a mat out of rushes on which she could deliver the child. A beautiful baby girl was born, with white skin and big smile, but she did not live long. Her parents mourned her death. Her father wrapped his daughter in the mat and buried her in the garden. It was then that Temerõ (the creator) created the kotõ (cotton tree): red in color, with white seeds. Temerõ appeared to the mother in a dream and taught her how to collect, process and turn the cotton into thread. And so she began to make hammocks and passed on that knowledge to the other women in the village. The Creator also said that every time a mother remembers her daughter, she will be able to create hammocks. And so, to this day, women take the cotton seeds and plant them in their lands in October. In this same period, the Caripuna hold the Turé Feast. During the celebration, women mount the laku (sacred spot shaped like a wheel) decorating it with cotton to host the spirit of the girl at the party.

Wood, liana, fabric

70 x 50 x 180 cm

Francisco Klinger Carvalho

Untitled, 1990

Wood, liana, fabric

70 x 50 x 180 cm

Francisco Klinger has digged into Latin American socioeconomic themes, always interested in the possibility of rendering problematics on the disappearing of indigenous people. One of his works, for instance, features a hammock wrapped by a group of lianas, resulting in what resembles an embalmed piece. The objects’ formal configuration seems to refer to a kind of magical usage. At the same time, it reinforces the lack of practical use of articles that, in fiction, have lost their users. The artist, just like an archeologist, picks up and emulates organic material-made objects, and creates formal fiction between the sacred and

the morbid. The presence of death is noted, but Klinger does not mean to take part on great massacre narratives; for him, death must be observed as part of the inevitable circle of life, and such compositions are seen as a vocabulary of possibilities revolving disappearance.

Silkscreen on fabric series

60 x 80 cm

Indigenous Hammock: Wapichana Extension, 2019

Gustavo Caboco

Silkscreen on fabric series

60 x 80 cm

A set of eight images dictate the autobiographic narrative of Gustavo Caboclo. Son of Lucilene, a Uapixana woman from the State of Roraima, the artist sees himself as an extending dichotomy between that region and Curitiba, the city where he was raised. The hammock-object was not an everyday object, but now, when looking at it, he sees it as a way of connecting to relatives that are no perceived as distant. Each of the banner illustrations presents itself as an allegory to the different method of relating to his origins and identity: (1) “Parana-Hammock” is the connection with the indigenous land of Canauanim; (2) “Passage-Hammock” is the perception of the object as bridge between cultures; (3) “Mother-Hammock” is representative of his relationship with his mother and grandmother; (4) “Banana tree-Hammock” is about the relationship with roots and eating habits of the Uapixana community; (5) “Buriti-Hammock” is the physical act of doing a headstand as a way to connect with Mother Earth; (6) “Duit-Hammock” represents the presence of Makunaima – or duit – in his brother’s body; (7) “Grünberg-Hammock” references Vista Alegre, Roraima, place where his grandmother Maria passed away in 2013, as well as the 1924 German traveler Koch-Grünberg; and (8) “Damorida-Hammock”, the object placed in a clay pot while the artist prepares damorida, a typical dish of the indigenous people of Roraima and is prepared with a large amount of chilies.

Exhibition copies

30 x 50 cm

Photographic record for the 100-Hammock Performance for Itaú Cultural Institute – Paulista Avenue, 1997

Tunga

Exhibition copies

30 x 50 cm

Hammocks are found in many of Tunga’s works, not only due to its plastic appeal, but also to his critical look towards Brazilian history. 100 Rede (“100 Hammock”, a pun for “no hammock”) was performed in 1997, in Sao Paulo. In celebration to Culture Day, Tunga and other artists got commissioning for sculptures to be shown at Paulista Avenue. Instead of making a sole object, Tunga invited 100 men to make a performance during the opening. Wearing white shirts, numbered from 1 to 100, jeans, shoes and hats, and pushing a fair stroll, they stopped in the middle of the avenue, strung up their hammocks and ate their food from lunch boxes. The archetype for the northeastern migrant, for workers who eat under stranger eyes, was echoed in a formal event. Furthermore, that proposition calls into question the notions of “work” and “art work”. As usual in Tunga’s poetics, if, on one hand, we can notice some elements who create a dialogue with the “Brazilian culture”, on the other, the text declaimed by those 100 men—Shakespeare’s “The Phoenix and the Turtle” poem (1601)—brought a few contradictions to a nationalist interpretation.

By using hammocks, the artist shows his interest in exploring and defying the natural laws of gravity, strength and weight. His research made him obsessed with all possibilities that the act of lifting objects using thread and webs of different thickness and materials could provide—as in his work Berço com Crânios (“Cradle with Skulls”). The latter brings an allegory for the brevity of life, by showing bones resting over little cradle-like hammocks. The hammock is not only a space for resting and breathing, but it may also be used as a reminder of death.

Iron plate and polyester cord

02 plates | 50 x 50 x 1 cm each

A-B-A, 1987

Ernesto Neto

Iron plate and polyester cord

02 plates | 50 x 50 x 1 cm each

Ernesto Neto’s research is situated between sculpture and installation, in a search for a formal, symbolic articulation of various materials. The A-B-A series, made out of metal plates and rope pieces, is one of his first works. If we cannot find in them the literal presence of hammocks— used in some of the artist’s most recent installations—, we may notice a balance and tension game between two spots, which reminds us of the shape how objects are structured.

Eight joined hammocks with plastic rattles in the porches

Variable

Social hammock, 2017-2019

OPAVIVARÁ!

Eight joined hammocks with plastic rattles in the porches

Variable

OPAVIVARÁ!, art collective from Rio de Janeiro, proposes poetic subversions in public and institutional spaces related to interactive experiences that can be experienced collectively. One of the goals is to make us reflect on the aesthetic and political relationships of everyday life.

Another central interest e is a re-coding of the ancestral cultures that constitute “Brazilian culture’, flirting with universal rituals, such as eating and drinking, parties and leisure activities. “Social Hammock” invites the public to rest and to share. Its title is a pun with the expression “Social Network” (in direct reference to social media). In Brazilian Portuguese, the same word (“rede”) is used for both hammocks and all kinds of nets (fishing net, networks and so on). Therefore, in Portuguese, there is no difference between “Social Hammock” and “Social Network”: they both translate as “Rede Social”.

Photography

33 x 50 cm

Sertão series, 1960 decade

Maureen Bisilliat

Photography

33 x 50 cm

Maureen Bisilliat emigrated to Brazil in 1957, switching mediums from painting to photography. The emblematic room Xingu Terra, of the 13th Bienal of São Paulo in 1975, was a project signed by her along with Orlando Villas-Bôas, one of the responsibles for creating the Xingu National Park. Maureen edited books on photography inspired by the works of great Brazilian writers and by specific regions of the country. Her work is present in two different parts of the exhibition: in the session “The invention of Brazilian Northeast region”, in which her photos show the hammock as a constant presence in the harsh lives of the inhabitants of Juazeiro do Norte, in the state of Ceará. The images evoke a certain melancholy. The session called “Looking at the Otherness, Looking at Yourself”, features photos taken of indigenous people in Xingu. The images of the hammocks, either occupied or empty, carry the weight of time, which passed and compiled the suffering of the native peoples. The laconic nature of those photographed is captured in both series of photos.

Photography

18,5 x 23,6 cm

Fishermen in the Amazonas River banks, 1865

Albert Frisch

Photography

18,5 x 23,6 cm

Albert Frisch took pictures of the Amazon in 1867, which became one of the first visual records of indigenous peoples of the region. And that is why he is considered the first “traveling photographer” to capture images of the Amazon. With an ethnographic style, he was the photographer who joined the expedition organized by the engineer Franz Keller-Leuzinger. Frisch photographed many indigenous groups living near the Amazon, Madeira, Negro, Solimões and Tarumã rivers. At this point in time, photography had been around for a little more than 30 years, so the techniques of capturing images still involved holding a pose for several minutes. Moreover, being photographed was an entirely new experience for the indigenous people. The hammock is positioned differently in each photograph, including Frisch’s self-portrait on the banks of Tarumã River, with the hammock located inside his canoe.

Warhaftig Historia und Beschreibung Einer Landtschafft der Wilden, Nacketen, Grimmigen Menschfresser Leuthen, in der Newenwelt America Gelegen…

Exhibition copy

19,5 x 13,5 cm

Warhaftig Historia und Beschreibung Einer Landtschafft der Wilden, Nacketen, Grimmigen Menschfresser Leuthen, in der Newenwelt America Gelegen… (True story and description of a land of wild, bare, cruel, human-eaters wild people, located in the American new world…), 1557

Hans Staden

Exhibition copy

19,5 x 13,5 cm

In many Amerindian cultures, hammocks are seen as an extension of the physical body—they are kept by the individual from birth to death. The group of engravings bring different impressions of funeral rituals practiced by Brazilian indigenous peoples.

An attentive eye would realize many of those images look alike. Publications by the European voyagers Hans Staden, Jean de Léry and André Thevet—all from the 16th century—spread through Europe and created a remarkable imagery of the Americas. That instance led the great editor Theodore de Bry—a Dutchman who had never been to Brazil—to release a book on the new country, based on imitation and re-configuration of previous publications.

Its images are similar to photomontage pictures made to imply verisimilitude to the European public. It’s worth of notice how some image tradition resisted until the 19th century, in authors like Denis and Taunay—for whom the conception of a convincing visual narrative was more important than anthropological reports.

Watercolor

35 x 45,5 cm

Tipivão: From Pernambuco, 1848

H. Lewis

Watercolor

35 x 45,5 cm

On these images, hammocks are described as means of transportation in the context of Brazilian slavery system—they are not only a mere object for resting, but a symbol of power game and social privilege. Those depicts reveal how the Eurocentric eye has built an image which is directly proportional to the various degrees of violence from colonization: hammocks were used to record the many social spheres in the Brazilian territory, notably slavery. Two black men carry a hammock on their shoulders. Even wearing hats, they are the ones who get the sun heat over their bodies, while, inside those richly adorned transports, white people were protected by curtains. What catches our attention is the fact that the black bodies are in direct contact with the ground, which brings to light the clear contradiction between ostentation and domination in Brazil. Coming from either farms or urban centers, those means of transportation and the comfort of land owners were always supported by the bodies of black men.

Iron and leather mat

75 x 63 x 81,5 cm

Tripod Chair, reissue from Nucleon 8, 1990

Lina Bo Bardi and Giancarlo Palanti

Iron and leather mat

75 x 63 x 81,5 cm

Lina Bo Bardi was an Italian architect a designer who immigrated to Brazil in the 1940s. Searching for modern furniture, she pored through the different types of Brazilian wood and textiles. Aware of the habits of the economically disadvantaged, she acquainted herself with the hammocks used on the river boats that navigated up and down the rivers of Northern Brazil and used them as inspiration to create chairs with a style that evoked the cultural elements, ignoring neither the aesthetics nor the concepts disseminated by the modernist movement. Lina created three models of chairs from her observations of the hammock. One of them is called “Lazy Chair”: made of sisal and resembles the indigenous artifact. The other two models are called “Tripod Chair” and “Three Legged Chair”. The first was made through woodturning and the second was made out of conduits.

Oil on canvas

42 x 62 x 5 cm

In the Hammock, 1986

Ranchinho

Oil on canvas

42 x 62 x 5 cm

The traditional literature regarding painter Ranchinho usually highlight the fact that he was self-taught and had difficulties socializing due to the physical and mental issues he had from childhood. His theme points to both the rural world of upstate São Paulo and to the urban landscape. It is interesting to observe that Ranchinho inserts himself in some of the images he produces. Ergo, he could have portrayed himself in this painting. We see a male figure lying on a blue hammock on a balcony, with his face turned to the spectator. Wearing a half buttoned shirt, he is smoking, his boots left under the hammock, a knife and a piece of rolled tobacco lie nearby - all are elements related to the time of rest for the fieldworker.

Exhibition copy

27 x 37 cm

The hammock (Views and Costumes of the City and Neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), 1822

Henry Chamberlain

Exhibition copy

27 x 37 cm

Besides the daily scenes where the hammock was present, the ensemble mainly shows images which depict black people burying their dead. The way hammocks were used was indicative of different social levels: for instance, the funeral of African royalty in American soil is accompanied by a large public procession. In the same way one can tell social levels apart by comparing hammocks to buggies and litters, a burial scene makes them notice the contrast between royalty and an average person.

Regardless the social hierarchy of black people who were buried in hammocks, they would never possess the same status that distinguished them from free men.

1876, December 17th

Print

36,4 x 27,7 cm

Illustrated Magazine n. 47, cover, 1876, December 17th

Angelo Agostini

Print

36,4 x 27,7 cm

In the middle of the 19th century, as the limestone printing technique (lithography) were spread worldwide, the first illustrated magazines showed up in Rio de Janeiro— the capital of the Brazilian Empire. Periodically printed, those publications brought political cartoons, caricatures and comments on court life, as well as its social and political features.

The Semana Ilustrada (“Illustrated Week”) debuted in 1860, and it was published until 1875. It was one of the first magazines of the kind, created in partnership between the German immigrants Karl Linde and the Fleiuss brothers. Usually signed by Heinrich Fleiuss, the magazine used to praise the administration of Pedro II of Brazil and lacked polemical issues. It brought the feature of Doctor Week, a character who often engaged in dialogues with a black enslaved child called “Moleque” (young boy).

Italian Angelo Agostino arrived in Brazil in 1859, and started working in caricatures and illustrations. Having an extremely critical look towards society, he joined the abolitionist movement and did not spare the royal family in his critical images.

He started A Vida Fluminense (“Rio’s Life”) magazine (1868–1875) and later published several others, like O Mosquito (“The Mosquito”,1869–1877), Revista Illustrada (“Illustrated Magazine”, 1876–1888) and Don Quixote (1895–1903).

The first association between hammocks and laziness appear in those visual chronicles—all of them created during the process of modernization of Brazilian urban culture life. Now seen as objects linked to outdoor life and opposed to industrialization, the hammocks became a symbol for everyone who had the privilege of not working—from farmers to senators—and articulated an acid kind of humor.

Acrylic on canvas

90 x 150 x 5 cm

Koch-Grunberg Resting in High Negro River, Amazonas, 2005

Füãreicü

Acrylic on canvas

90 x 150 x 5 cm

The acrylic Repouso de Koch- Grünberg— Alto Rio Negro/Amazonas (Koch-Grünberg Resting—High Negro River/Amazonas), by Füãreicü, takes part in a 74-piece collection made by indigenous contemporary artists, all graduated in 2005 from the Art School at Dirson Costa Amazon Arts and Culture Institute (IDC), in Manaus. The pieces were produced by six artists from five different ethnic groups, based on images and reports from Koch-Grünberg’s research in the early 1900s. Between 1903 and 1905, the German ethnologist observed and wrote down the everyday life of indigenous people from the High Negro River region. Part of those reports regards hammocks. A hundred years later, Füãreicü, from the Ticuna people, inverted the roles of observer and observed, stressing the alterity links, and painted Koch-Grünberg writing on his logbook in the end of a journey day, sitting by himself in a hammock, surrounded by personal objects.

Füãreicü took a distant point of view, as if observing a stranger from a safe distance. Therefore, the German researcher seems tiny in the composition, almost “swallowed” by the Amazonian landscape. Through the time gap that separates the foreign ethnologist and the indigenous artist, the hammock outstands as the only common element for both men.

Koch-Grünberg Resting—High Negro River/Amazonas), along with the other 73 works from this collection, willbe part of the founding collection of the Amazon Art and Imagery Museum (Maia), currently being implemented.

Canson paper over black acrylic on canvas background

90 x 90 cm

Makunaimî Lying on a Universal Hammock, 2017

Jaider Esbell

Canson paper over black acrylic on canvas background

90 x 90 cm

For many people Makunaima is a mere indigenous man, and here he sleeps in the hammock in a non-existing place. For others, he is just an invention from literature, something not used – therefore, unnecessary. Suppose the words Makunaima or Makunaíma are new to many people. We point our efforts in two direct fronts.

The ones who believe Makunaima does not indeed have any character are not uptaded, but they represent the lazy Brazil made of people with dubious temperament.

The ones who listen or read about the myth Macunaima for the first time are directly linked to our interests.

By choosing that line of action, another interest is required: contextualization.

As though the term “decolonization” finds its resistance, the term “indian” has its use put out of place by a consensus that represents the indigenous movement, or movements.

The lazyness and the unproductiveness assigned to indians – read and spoken indigenous people – are negatively reinforced thanks to the least ignorance of the status quo as their being born, living and working in the forest.

Do I speak of pre-conception (prejudice)?

Metal engraving on paper

25 x 31,6 cm

Mário de Andrade in a Hammock, 1930

Lasar Segall

Metal engraving on paper

25 x 31,6 cm

Written in 1928 by Mário de Andrade, Macunaíma is considered a milestone in the “modern Brazilian culture”. Besides looking at the indigenous identities, the book has started a friction of landscapes, sounds, personas and words coming from sources that go from Köch-Grunberg reports on the Amazon forest to the delirious city of Sao Paulo. Macunaíma is a cultural amalgam featured in the form of an outsider, amoral individual: a devotee of the “divine laziness”. When observing the sentences in which the word hammock is inserted in the book, we can picture the semantic associations established by the author.

In the first part, the object is linked to the idea of individual property: each character lies in their own hammock. As he gets to Sao Paulo, Macunaíma realizes that the local “hammocks” were odd: he had lain on a bed and entered the modern intimacy of the city. Throughout his adventures - as in the literature of foreign voyagers who had been to colonial Brazil—the hammocks are always related to human vital activities: it is the space for coitus, illness, idle time, slumber and death.

It was only in the years of 1943 and 1944 that Macunaíma was turned into images, by the Argentinian artist Carybé.

The motion picture was released in the Brasilia Film Festival in 1969 and was an immediate success amongst public and critics. It was directed by Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, son of Rodrigo Melo Franco de Andrade, who as an intimate friend of the writer Mário de Andrade and worked as a director of the National Historic and Artistic Heritage Service between 1937 and 1967.

The sleeping hammock is a frequent topic in Mário de Andrade’s production: often associated to laziness, the object has been present in his poems, texts, presents, photos and journals, as well as featured in his portraits.

Photography

50 x 50 cm

Wooden Raft and Raftsmen, Aquiraz

Marcel Gautherot

Photography

50 x 50 cm

Marcel Gautherot is consider a “traveling photographer”. Born in France, when he settled in Brazil, he became recognized for his photographs of modern Brazilian architecture and of the patrimony of the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN). In the 1940s, he navigated the São Francisco River and photographed its different peoples and their popular and religious festivities from a kind of anthropological point of view. During this trip, the hammock was also registered as part of the boats navigating the country’s Northern and Northeastern regions.

An image seems to sum up the tension between rest and work, tradition and modernity. Described as “Rafstman Resting in a Primordial Hammock”, it centers around a sleeping raftsman photographed from behind. The image shows both the work of fishing - the raftsmen’s main activity, and the surrender of the tired body to the sun. This photograph was one of the images selected by Lucio Costa to compose his Riposatevi installation at La Triennale di Milano in 1964.

Fabric, cotton thread, crochet and sewing

150 x 370 x 120 cm

Untitled, 2007

Adriana Aranha

Fabric, cotton thread, crochet and sewing

150 x 370 x 120 cm

In these series by Adriana Aranha, we perceive her speculative eye on everyday objects. The hammocks lose their utilitarian nature and become disruptive; they no longer bear the weight of the sleeping body and begin to instigate the reflection on the other dimensions of everyday life. Handmade in the state of Paraiba—the artist’s state of birth—, its black color calls attention for not being a usual color of the hammocks produced n the region. The object is associated to the tropics and leisure, when it is of a dark color, it can be seen as a reminder of death.