The Brazilian magazine of contemporary art and culture seLecT conducted an editorial residency with three artists related to Amazon issues – the subject of the 52nd edition of the quarterly publication.

From July to October 2021, Denilson Baniwa [BR], Guerreiro do Divino Amor [BR/CH] and Vanessa Lorenzo [CH] collaborated virtually with a team of editors, creating content such as texts, podcasts, maps, and filters for social media.

Lorenzo found a link between the ecofeminist agenda and her project «Mari Mutare», inspired by Norse mythologies about the Greenman, a hybrid between human and planet. From these ideas, the artist created a character that mixes technology and biological discussions and was unfolded in texts, images and filters for social networks.

Divino Amor worked on mapping data on the theme of food within the relationships between the Amazon and Switzerland. Using the ideas from his project «Superfictions» (a re-reading of the forces that operate in the construction of territory and the collective imagination), he created entries that, although based on true information, have a fictional tone, of an absurd reality.

Baniwa, for his part, conducted a series of interviews with indigenous women who are activists and artists, which originated videos and a podcast. The conversations are based on his research about the Paxiúba, a tree in the state of Amazonas that has roots outside the earth and can shift places – a metaphor for the displacement of indigenous people.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Denilson Baniwa, of the Baniwa nation, is a native of Rio Negro, in the interior of Amazonas. He is a jaguar-artist and currently lives in Rio de Janeiro. His works express his experience as an indigenous person in the present time, mixing traditional and contemporary indigenous references and appropriating western icons to communicate the thought and the struggle of native peoples in various media and languages, such as paintings, installations, digital media and performances.

Guerreiro do Divino Amor is a Swiss-Brazilian artist with a master’s degree in architecture. His research explores the Superfictions, hidden forces that interfere in the construction of territory and collective imaginary, taking form in films, publications and installations. His work has been shown in several exhibitions and national and international festivals, besides being finalist of the Vivo do Cinema Brasileiro Grand Prize 2009, with his work «Clube da Criança» (2008). Currently, he lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.

Vanessa Lorenzo is an artist based in Lausanne and Berlin. She trained as an industrial design engineer and media designer and critically engages with technology to enable odd sympathies among people, the environment and the technologies that intertwine them. She develops public workshops that focus on the producing of new knowledge through bio-practices, DIY, Open-Source electronics and speculative design methodology. The artist believes in communities of makers/hackers/artists working in alternative spaces to have the power to innovate and subvert the dominating role of traditional science and technology.