Description
This past semester, I worked in a counter-narratives lab at my university, and we chose to investigate Noroeste, a region in Brasília (the capital). As a planned city, Brasília's goal for this area was to expand residential zones for workers, but it ended up becoming one of the epicenters of gentrification and environmental racism. In this same region, in this city that portrays itself as a tabula rasa, there were already inhabitants. Which honestly seems obvious, since Brazil, and Brasília too, are, above all, Indigenous land. And so we delved into investigating the Santuário dos Pajés, in contrast with the real estate expansion and speculation in Noroeste. Our investigation had the support of Forensic Architecture.
The Santuário dos Pajés is a small demarcated area recognized as Indigenous territory in Brasília. It took years of fighting, literally, for this territory to be recognized, and also to prevent its inhabitants from being violently expelled from their own land. And why all this resistance from the state to recognize them? Because of the sick ambition of politicians, construction companies, and business.
I asked Fetxa if they had a body of water within the territory, and he pointed to a building across the road: meaning it had been deliberately drained to make space for a residential building. I asked what kind of animals roamed the area, and because of fences "deemed safe/ecological" by the very agencies responsible for animal protection, all movement of terrestrial animals was restricted; for the most part, only birds could pass through. I felt a profound grief, both for the river and for the presence of the animals, and I remembered a dream I had of a huge building over a river, and I was outraged at this crazy idea of constructing a building inside a river.
I think I was chosen for this project because of my intersecting identity, but also because of my research and production at the intersection of art and technology. Photogrammetry has a lot to do with some of Forensic Architecture's projects, and that was my proposal: to walk through the territory of the Santuário, talk to the representative (Fetxa), and, with consent, create these photogrammetric portraits.
I want to emphasize that owning or purchasing these portraits will not, under any circumstances, imply the concession of rights over this territory. Buying or owning these works means exclusively that you are interested in the sovereignty and full autonomy of all Indigenous peoples, that you are interested in their culture, and that you wish to support my research and production.