(Photo: Victor Moriayama pour Le Monde).

French luxury goods conglomerate revered for its winsome jewelry and watch design, Cartier proudly announced its largest exhibition to date. Dedicated to the inspiringly noble work of Swiss-born Brazilian photographer and activist, Claudia Andujar, the exhibition will be held at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, in the French capital of Paris.

Cartier Celebrates Claudia Andujar’s Extraordinary Contributions to Photography

Devoting over five decades to photographing and protecting Brazil’s largest indigenous group, the Yanomami people, Claudia Andujar’s archives incorporate a mix of over three hundred images, drawings, and audiovisual installations. The exhibition, curated by Thyago Nogueira for the Instituto Moreira Salles in Brazil, thus celebrates her extraordinary contributions both artistically and through political and human activism.

Born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland in 1931, Claudia Andujar began her career in photojournalism in 1955, not long after losing her father and several relatives during World War II. Paving a path for herself through developing a series of sombre black-and-white portraits, Andujar was first introduced to the Yanomami in 1971 whilst piecing together an article about the Amazon for Realidade magazine. It was there that the indigenous people’s alluring grace and dignity had stirred a desire to pursue more in-depth photographic essays on the community.

Experimenting with a variety of techniques in an effort to visually translate the shamanic culture of the people, it was not uncommon to see Claudia Andujar smearing Vaseline unto her lenses, using flash devices, oil lamps and infrared film to create visual distortions, streaks of light, and hyper-saturated colors.

Equipping members of the community with markers and paper, Claudia Andujar felt it was important to provide the Yanomami people with the opportunity to represent their own conceptions of nature and the universe – these drawings later formed her iconic Marcados series, which will be showcased alongside another audiovisual installation entitled, the Genocide of the Yanomami: Death of Brazil (1989/2018).

Featuring an array of out-of-this-world work, The Fondation Cartier will present Claudia Andujar, The Yanomami Struggle at Triennale Milano, Italy, from Fall 2020 onwards, as part of the joint partnership between the two institutions. Travelling from the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, from June 6, 2020, and to Foundation Mapfre, Madrid, Spain, from February 11, 2021 – the exhibition at Fondation Cartier is currently open to the public from now till 10 May 2020.

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