Indigenous Histories

10.20.23 – 2.25.2024

The Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) in collaboration with the Kode Bergen Art Museum is organizing a major group exhibition titled Indigenous Histories.

The exhibition occupies MASP’s first floor and second floor galleries from October 20th 2023 to February 25th 2024; it then travels to the Kode, from April 26th through August 25th 2024.

The exhibition will present different accounts of indigenous histories from South America, North America, Oceania and Scandinavia, through art and visual culture, curated by artists and researchers who are indigenous or have an indigenous descent, bringing together works of multiple media, typologies, origins and periods, from the period before European colonization to the present.

Despite its international scope and its temporal breadth, the project does not take an all-encompassing nor an encyclopedic approach—on the contrary. In this respect, it is important to consider the meaning of the word “histórias” in Portuguese, which is rather different than “histories” in English. The term “histórias” encompasses both fiction and nonfiction, historical accounts as well as personal ones, of a public and private nature, on a micro or macro level, and thus possess a more polyphonic, speculative, open, incomplete, processual, and fragmented quality than the traditional notion of History.

Indigenous Histories comprises eight sections: seven devoted to the different regions in South America, North America, Oceania and Scandinavia, as well as one thematic section devoted to indigenous activisms around the world. Once again, the aim is not to fully represent the vast, complex, and layered indigenous histories of each particular region, but more so to provide a cross-section, a fragment, or a sample of such histories in a concise yet relevant selection, so that it may be juxtaposed with others from different parts of the world.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a major catalog published in separate editions in Portuguese and English, reproducing the works in the show as well as essays about each of the sections written by their curators.

Indigenous histories is curated by Abraham Cruzvillegas (Mexico City); Alexandra Kahsenni:io Nahwegahbow, Jocelyn Piirainen, Michelle LaVallee e Wahsontiio Cross (Ottawa, Canada); Bruce Johnson-McLean (Camberra, Australia), Edson Kayapó, Kássia Borges Karajá and Renata Tupinambá, Curators-at-large of Indigenous Art, MASP; Irene Snarby (Tromsø, Norway; Kode); Nigel Borell (Auckland, New Zealand) and Sandra Gamarra (Lima, Peru), and has a curatorial coordination by Adriano Pedrosa, Artistic Director, MASP, and Guilherme Giufrida, Assistant Curator, MASP.