Artistic engagements
For many Indigenous peoples, art is not seen as an activity separate from daily life, and it is not a form of individual expression. Many Indigenous cultures do not have a separate word for "art," instead, we see art itself is a language that expresses the visions of the land dreaming through us. For the Huni Kuī people of the Amazon, art is the language of the anaconda, brought into the world through the sacred plants, who are being threatened by the destruction of the Amazon.
We are calling on artists to help us assemble a gallery of artworks that draw attention to what is happening to the Amazon and the urgency to make Indigenous rights central to the climate agenda
We are asking artists to connect their work to the messages from Chief Ninawa Huni Kui, and to upload their work so that they can be displayed in our virtual gallery.
This is important. Through artistic work, these messages can reach audiences that would not be exposed or pay attention to them otherwise. We are not asking you to become a protagonist of this campaign, but to mobilize your art to draw attention to the messages from the Indigenous communities.
This task requires that we take a different stance on “art for social change” as we navigate the pitfalls, limits, paradoxes and possibilities of creativity within a Western sensibility - precisely in order to place Indigenous lives and rights at the centre of the climate agenda. When creating work for this purpose, we need to take account of our own cultural imperialism, colonialism and separability while not backing away from the challenge of trying to interrupt colonial patterns and reorient ourselves toward collective well-being and existence.
Please upload your work to this dropbox. By uploading your work, you agree to make it available on a Creative Commons license (specifically, CC BY-NC).
You can also share your work on social media (Instagram and Facebook posts and stories, Tiktok trends, YouTube videos, etc.) with the hashtags: #all4theamazon, #foreveryonesfuture, #hauxhauxmovement.