Cartier shops have been selling their signature luxury gold and diamond jewelry, watches and accessories since 1847 – photo: Cartier

“Things have been bad since 2015, when the price of gold started to rise. The life of the Yanomami is indexed to the price of gold”, says anthropologist and consultant for the Cartier Foundation, Bruce Albert.

Bruce Albert at a Cartier Foundation art show in France in 2022. The Cartier Foundation is funded by the sale of Cartier luxury gold jewelry, watches and accessories – photo: Cartier Foundation

Bruce Albert transcribed the thoughts of Yanomami spokesman and shaman Davi Kopenawa in “The Falling Sky” (2010), a book whose objective is to warn “the people of merchandise” to stop the destruction of the forest before “the sky falls on us all.”

This admonition is repeated in the recently published texts of Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert “The Spirit of the Forest”, which was originally written for exhibitions held in Paris by the Cartier Foundation.

“We are in the last chapter of colonization and the gold rush, which began in the 16th century.”

“The Spirit of the Forest” details how Yanomami territory has been devastated by invasions of gold miners and subsequent epidemics for a century.

Why does this tragedy continue to repeat itself incessantly?

Who are “the people of merchandise”?

In the marketing spin continuum of employing “art” as a mechanism for the greenwashing of the gold jewelry, watches and accessories company that created and bankrolls them, the Cartier Foundation is relentlessly pursuing additional opportunities to display their « Yanomami » – « Trees » – « Nature » art shows in association with the Cartier brand… 

Successive directors of the Cartier Foundation have been decidedly unambiguous about the goal of the foundation as “a tool for the seduction of public opinion” and “communications for the Cartier company” and that’s exactly what is taking place right now at The Shed, Hudson Yards, New York, until April 16.

If the Cartier Foundation can persuade the public that Cartier is doing good works on behalf of the Yanomami, nature and trees, they’ll sell more tickets to the art shows, more big catalogs of the art and, best of all – (the entire point of the existence of the Cartier Foundation) – the name of the “philanthropic, benevolent, altruistic, humanitarian,” luxury jewelry, watch and accessory company that the public will retain when Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Mother’s Day, Black Friday and the other consumer holidays arrive is, of course, Cartier.

Fortunately for any visitors to The Shed who are inspired by “The Yanomami Struggle” and wish to dash to the nearest Cartier shop in order to buy gold and diamond trinkets, the Cartier shop is right there in the same shopping and entertainment complex!

Online it states that reservations are recommended at the Cartier shop, Hudson Yards, but when you get there the “security guard” might tell you that you cannot even come inside without an appointment, so be sure to reserve in advance so that you won’t miss out on this intensive consumerist extravaganza; a Cartier art event (buy the catalog and the new new book!) and just moments away, a Cartier shopping event (buy the ring, bracelet, watch!)

The Art of Manipulation:
The corporate contrivance of art sponsorship was so perfectly described in 1994 by Hans Haacke in “Free Exchange”, the book by Pierre Bourdieu and Hans Haacke, that I’m quoting here from the English version published by Polity Press in 1995: “One would underestimate the Venice Biennale if one were to think that it is only concerned with development aid for Venice and dividing the secular shares of the art market. Philip Morris, at least, was not fooled, when the giant consumer goods corporation sponsored the American pavilion of Isamu Noguchi in 1986.  The Marlboro cowboys couldn’t care less whether Noguchi’s prices would go up. Living in the saddles all their lives, they understood one thing: ‘It takes art to make a company great.’ – Philip Morris’ slogan on double-page advertisements in the American press announcing art events sponsored by the company during the 1970s and 1980s.  In Italy, during the  Biennale year of 1993, Philip Morris presented itself with the slogan ‘La culture dei tempi moderni.‘
One might be tempted to assume that the weather-beaten fellows with big hats were thinking of paintings of their horses, or of fiery sunsets behind the Rockies. No … They aim at the big show places for ‘high art’ around the world. One can surmise what they are looking for from the jargon with which such behavior is analyzed in a book published by the conservative newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: ‘Sponsoring has three central communications goals: recognition, attitudes, and the promotion of good relations. What matters is that ‘the positive image of the sponsored is transferred to the sponsor’ (image transfer).  FAZ summary: ‘Sponsoring is an opportunity to cultivate relations with selected big clients, trading partners, opinion makers and opinion multipliers, in an attractive setting.’ (Manfred Bruhn, ‘Sponsoring. Unternehmen als Mäzen und Sponsoren’‘ – The company as Sponsor and Patron – 1987)
The oil men from Mobil are more direct. They call it ‘Art for the sake of business.’ For those who are a bit dense they elaborate: ‘What’s in it for us – or for your company? Improving – and securing the business climate.’ (Mobil corporation advertisement, New York Times, October 10, 1985)
In short, this means low taxes, favorable regulations in the areas of commerce, public health, and the environment, governmental export assistance, irrespective of the nature of the products and the politics of the country of destination, and a defense against criticism of the sponsor’s conduct. For example, behind the smokescreen of art, it is easier for the Wehrwirtschaftsführer (Third Reich term for leaders of the defense industry) of Daimler-Benz to rid themselves elegantly of pesky reporters inquiring about the company’s chumminess with Saddam Hussein and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. 
Alain-Dominique Perrin, the boss of the Cartier bauble shops in Paris (and the creator of the Fondation Cartier for Contemporary Art) once described this mechanism in exquisite, amorous terms: ‘Sponsoring art is not only a fantastic communications tool. It is much more than that. It is a tool for the seduction of public opinion.’ (Alain-Dominique Perrin, ‘Le Mécénat français: La fin d’un préjugé’, Galeries Magazine, no. 15, 1986)
The best part is that the seduced are allowed to pay for the aphrodisiac expenses incurred in their seduction. They are tax-deductible. The cowboys with their cancer sticks simply followed their innate country smarts when they decided to take Noguchi along for a ride. 
‘Culture is in fashion. All the better. As long as it lasts, we should use it,’ applauds the gentleman from the Place Vendôme (Alain-Dominique Perrin in the same article in Galeries Magazine) – apparently aware of the impermanence of the high entertainment value culture enjoys at the moment.
According to Thomas Wagner, who staged a fair of electronic consumer products (MEDIALE) laced with art in the 1993 cyberspace of Hamburg, ‘art events of the scale of documenta or the Biennale are modern myths.’  Public relations experts and their marketing colleagues have gleefully discovered that, of late, the prestige and the symbolic power of these and comparable mythical art institutions are at their disposal. Art still exudes the odor of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, an unbeatable image-transfer offering. 
Because it is not suspected of serving worldly interests, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful (GTB) represent an enormous symbolic capital, even though it cannot be put into figures.  In his Biennale call, the mayor/comedy writer Riccardo Selvatico had declared that ‘art is one of the most valuable elements of civilisation’ and that it offers ‘unprejudiced decision of the spirit.’ Managers do not need to worry about what this may mean, as long as their target groups believe in the immaculate conception and no mass layoffs are in the offing. 
While Casanova, that great Venetian expert, has taught them that not just anything is suitable for the enterprise of seduction, they can rely on the art institutions to choose the appropriate means. 
We know from Philippe de Montebello, (from 1977 to 2008 the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) unquestionably a connoisseur of the milieu, how the internal control mechanism of sponsoring works: ‘It’s an inherent, insidious, hidden form of censorship.’ (cited in ‘A Word from our Sponsor,’ Newsweek, November 25, 1985).
GTB not only serves as a lubricant and constitutes exchange value in art markets. The Good, the True, and the Beautiful are empty terms, ready to be filled by any number of different contents. It is therefore not surprising that fierce arguments have always raged among producers and traders, as well as in the warehouses, over the dominance of this or that ingredient. And not only there. When it comes to the definition of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, more is at stake than parochial politicians of the art world sometimes imagine. Determining language is ideological and political management – to be sampled also in what has filled the pavilions of the Biennale over the past 100 years.”

Since 1995 when this book was published, the luxury brand Cartier has been busy cultivating new targets to “sponsor” in order to acquire “the prestigious positioning of its brand with a social dimension.” i.e.: Trees! Yanomami! 

A selected chronology:

1998 – At the São Paulo Biennale Hervé Chandès, general director of the Cartier Foundation, discovered Claudia Andujar’s photos of the Yanomami.

2000 – Hervé Chandès met the anthropologist Bruce Albert who introduced him to Davi Kopenawa and the Yanomami. Chandès then proposed an artistic event at the Cartier Foundation in Paris combining the work of contemporary artists, Claudia Andujar’s photos and the Yanomami – organized in partnership with the NGO Survival. 

Chandès was also instrumental in encouraging Bruce Albert to publish a book of Davi Kopenawa’s thoughts. An early version of the developing manuscript appeared in the catalogue of Cartier’s 2003 exhibition “Yanomami, The Spirit of the Forest.”

2003 – The first of many “Yanomami” exhibitions, “Yanomami, The Spirit of the Forest,” took place at the Foundation Cartier in Paris. (May – October, 2003). Bruce Albert was president of the NGO Survival France that year.

2004 – A year after the exhibition “Yanomami, The Spirit of the Forest,” Hervé Chandès detailed in an interview for parisart how closely the Cartier Foundation is overseen by the luxury gold watch and jewelry merchant Cartier:

“To give us an idea, what are the operating costs required by an establishment like this?

The Foundation is private, entirely funded by Cartier for its communications. To give a broad estimate, the general budget – operating and programming – varies around five million euros.

– What relationship does the Foundation have with the Cartier company?

It is a very close, simple and structured relationship. The Foundation has a mission to fulfill for which it has been entrusted and specifications to be respected. The Foundation reports regularly on its activities to the company with which it works hand in hand. We maintain close relations with Cartier and its foreign subsidiaries, particularly in the field of communication.“

2010 – The book by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert, “La chute du ciel ” was published in French by  PLON

While reading the completed book “The Falling Sky,” published in English in 2013, it’s evident that there is nothing in the 412 pages setting forth the words of Yanomami spokesman and shaman Davi Kopenawa that would allow anyone to think that the Yanomami appreciate gold or merchandise made with gold. Absolutely every reference to gold and those who admire gold in the book reveals Davi Kopenawa’s point of view: “They want to find gold – Their avidity was what made most of our elders die long ago!” –  “Merchandise Love – The Value the white people give the Gold they covet so much” –  “Gold is nothing more than shiny dust in the mud, yet the white people can kill for that!” – “Cannibal Gold” and so many more…

2015 – In Miami, federal prosecutors investigated and exposed a multi-billion dollar money laundering operation by employees of NTR Metals, a major US precious metals trading company. Three traders pleaded guilty to buying illegal “dirty” gold from narco-traffickers and other organized crime elements that was extracted from mines in Latin America.  One of NTR Metals’ customers was Cartier.

2016 – In an interview in ALUMNI SUP DE LUXE, Alain-Dominique Perrin maintains that “Luxury is a real job! ” “The Institut Supérieur de Marketing du Luxe was created at Cartier in 1990 to meet the new needs of the sector in terms of commercial development and global presence. A passion for luxury and beauty that he now intends to pass on to young people more than ever. … ‘Imagine the new markets: today Australians are entering luxury and we see magnificent shopping centers flourishing with all the major brands.”

2018 – More than 500 years after the conquest of the Americas by Europe initiated centuries of pillage of nature and displacement, slavery and horror for Indigenous peoples, Pope Francis visited the Madre de Dios region of Peru and said that the gold mining industry had become a “false god that demands human sacrifice” because it destroys people and nature and “corrupts everything. …I want everyone to hear God’s cry.” “Where are your sister and brother slaves?” the pope asked as he evoked the human trafficking that provides miners and sex workers for the gold industry. “There is so much complicity. And it’s a question for everyone.” The pope said that never before in history had traditional Amazon cultures been so intensely endangered.
Demand for gold and other rainforest resources from consumers in wealthy countries is driving the relentless and ongoing devastation of nature and the degradation of Indigenous lives. As the pope spoke in Peru, two of the gold traders from NTR Metals in Miami were sentenced to years in prison. The judge said that they contributed to “deforestation…poisoning of workers … social ills.”         
But they are not the only people involved who are guilty…

The same year, Alain-Dominique Perrin, co-chairman of the Richemont group’s strategic committee, said in an interview in Entreprendre: “We (Cartier) opened the door to the financing of art through luxury. … All the major companies in the luxury sector have embarked on sponsorship of contemporary art, including Louis Vuitton, Pinault, Prada, Hermès or recently the Galeries Lafayette. We forged the path by being the pioneers. Patronage is comparable to sponsorship: in return, the Foundation receives praise from the press, the media and social networks, which necessarily benefits the company. The company spends and injects money but derives a profit through additional notoriety and the prestigious positioning of its brand with a social dimension.“

2019 – Cartier’s CEO Cyrille Vigneron was interviewed in Fashion Network. The article details that “Cartier is part of the Swiss luxury group Richemont, which also controls Van Cleef & Arpels, Montblanc, IWC, Piaget, Alfred Dunhill, Chloé, James Purdey, Azzedine Alaïa, Shanghai Tang and Yoox Net-A-Porter. Richemont, belonging to the wealthy South African Rupert family, does not detail the income of each of its brands, but Cartier‘s turnover is estimated at more than 7 billion euros.  ‘Net-A-Porter is a very powerful platform, with a solid client base. And in terms of visibility and attractiveness for Cartier, everything has gone very well. We see that the penetration of the e-commerce channel goes beyond price issues and that expensive items are more and more accepted on the Internet,’ rejoices Cyrille Vigneron, who points out that ‘the most expensive item sold in the framework of this collaboration was a panther watch paved with diamonds sold for 140,000€ to a British customer.’”

2020 – The Yanomami made a comeback in Paris at « Claudia Andujar, The Yanomami Struggle » (January – September, 2020. “The Cartier Foundation is hosting the first major retrospective in Europe devoted to photographer Claudia Andujar. Engaged since the early 1970s with the Yanomami Indians living in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, Claudia Andujar is the author of the most important photographic work dedicated to them to date.
This exhibition thus highlights the extraordinary contribution of Claudia Andujar to the art of photography as well as to the defense of human rights, the preservation of the environment and global cultural diversity.
Texts by Claudia Andujar, Thyago Nogueira, curator of the exhibition, and Bruce Albert … document both the artist’s commitment and the story of one of the last peoples of the Amazon rainforest.” Cartier considers that the Yanomami are “one of the last peoples of the Amazon rainforest.” ?
Indeed, Cartier and others in the global gold industry (legal and illegal) certainly seem to be doing everything they possibly can to finish them off…

March 11th was the debut of the extraordinary “Dirty Gold” episode of the “Dirty Money” documentary series on Netflix. The film explores the money laundering scheme at NTR Metals, drug cartel involvement and the refineries in Miami that were closed down for trafficking in illegal gold from Latin America. At great personal risk, individuals and federal agents investigated and revealed the devastating and tragic toll of gold mining on nature and the lives of Indigenous people – “who lives with the daily threat of execution” – “One refinery employee – proud that Cartier was a customer” – As much as 75% of the gold extracted each year is used for jewelry, watches, accessories and other ostentatious & trivial status symbols sold by Cartier & others in the gold industry. 

Also in March, JOAILLERIE published:
“Cartier unveils the novelties of its ‘Clash’ collection! The famous French jewelry house launched its ‘Clash‘ collection in April 2019, which very quickly became a must-have. Cartier today unveils new jewelry, in white or gray gold, which embraces the turquoise shades of amazonite.” 

The publicity photo for “Clash” by Cartier is chillingly reminiscent of the wealthy Capitol of Panem in “The Hunger Games” universe. Perverse propaganda for a deadly industry?
I don’t know about mining conditions for amazonite, but there is no sustainable way to mine gold in the quantities required by the global luxury industry, or even those concerning discount gold jewelry…

How much longer are people in wealthy countries going to continue to pretend to not be responsible for the desolation and despair that gold and diamond mining is causing?

Bruce Albert, the anthropologist and apologist for Cartier, in an exchange on Twitter, informed me that: “Cartier has full custody of a portion of its gold supply chain” and sent a link to an article with that title in “professional jeweller” that he must not have read beforehand. The article quotes an assessment by Human Rights Watch that indicates that Cartier does not actually have a good record on environmental and human rights issues. You can read the article that Albert sent me here:

https://www.professionaljeweller.com/cartier-full-custody-portion-gold-supply-chain/

I replied: “I read: ‘unclear whether Cartier enforces this provision…has chain of custody for some, but not all, of its gold…does not indicate for diamonds…traceability for a fraction of its gold. Parent company Richemont: traceability is a long-term goal and an area for improvement.’ ??”
(A more recent update from Human Rights Watch titled “Covid-19 Pandemic Devastates Mining Communities, Increases Rights Risks” indicates that Cartier has made no progress in improving their dismal record.)

Bruce Albert continued on Twitter with: “But what I know first hand is that @Fond_Cartier and #CartierPhilanthropy gave since last April about 135,000 USD to the Yanomami in Brazil to buy medical equipment to protect themselves from the Covid-19 (including 65 medical oxygen concentrators).”

I replied, “You’re referring to the Covid-19 propagated by #goldminers in Yanomami territory (and elsewhere in the Amazon)? Perhaps @Fond_Cartier could send some medical equipment to other Indigenous communities decimated by #goldmining or revise their #BloodGold business model instead ??”
There was no further response…

Cartier’s mercantile motives are obvious. The business empire of this purveyor of gold and diamond trinkets exists and thrives because consumers crave status symbols. But when Stephen Corry and other representatives of an Indigenous peoples’ NGO, Survival, and anthropologist Bruce Albert attempt to convince the world that the luxury gold jewelry industry leader Cartier is doing good works?
How should we interpret a stance so ungrounded in reality? Deluded? Mercenary?

Unfortunately, All Gold Mining, Legal and llegal = Ecocide! Legal gold mines are involved in the destruction to ecosystems, wildlife and Indigenous lives, just like illegal gold mines. Instead of contaminating water sources, wildlife and local people with mercury, legal gold mines use toxic cyanure.

“Cyanide rivers on glaciers and tropical forests; Barrick Gold and Acacia Mining’s business reads like a horror novel! 

In September 2016, a cyanide pipeline collapsed due to lack of maintenance. This was used to refine gold in the Veladero mine in the province of San Juan, Argentina. The government stopped work on the gold mine, but one million liters of cyanide continued to flow into the four rivers surrounding the gold mines until an engineer documented the damage.

After years of fighting the miners’ union, Barrick Gold is now being fined millions of dollars, resulting in the sale of 50% of the Veladero mine to a Chinese multinational, the Shandong Mining Company, because Barrick chose not to pay the fine and fix the systems…”

“How is it that Canadian companies are present as economic actors in regions of fire and blood where there are disputes over mineral resources? … What is the price to pay by the people of the global South for stocks to rise on the Toronto Stock Exchange for the benefit of the big shareholders? … Should we support dictators, corrupt officials, trample on ecosystems, trample on workers, expropriate peasants, flood arable land, assassinate community leaders, fund warlords, consign contracts in Caribbean tax havens and practice tax evasion?” – Alain Deneault and William Sacher ask in their book, “Paradise Under Ground”

And their book « Imperial Canada Inc.: Legal Haven of Choice for the World’s Mining Industries », asks (and answers) the question: why is Canada home to more than 70% of the world’s mining companies?

“A powerful indictment of Canada’s role as a platform for mining firms engaged in highly exploitative and polluting activities in far-flung corners of the global South … and closer to home.”

« Legal » gold and other extractive horrors…

What, exactly, do the Yanomami think of gold, merchandise made with gold, and rampant  consumerism? It’s explained here in a short film made by Brazilian NGO Socioambiental:

PLEASE BOYCOTT GOLD FOR THE YANOMAMI! – Please give gifts that don’t destroy nature and the lives of indigenous peoples! – LISTEN TO THE YANOMAMI SHAMAN’S MESSAGE – THE PLEA OF THE RAINFOREST!

Here’s a small excerpt from the text: “But you’ve always been so greedy -Too primitive – too savage to understand – Now you still bring curses over the Yanomami – Illnesses – And once again we are dying because of it – And all Indigenous land is being turned into – ashes and mud”

2021 – The Cartier Foundation presented “The Yanomami Struggle” exhibition at the Triennale Milano until February 7 2021: “The Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art and Triennale Milano have joined forces for a period of 8 years. This unprecedented collaboration represents a new model of cultural partnership in Europe between public and private institutions.”
This time, not only the Cartier Foundation’s General Director Hervé Chandès spoke at the opening “…exhibition dedicated to the Yanomami and their cause…” but also Cyrille Vigneron, the CEO of the Cartier company. 
Italy’s Minister Franceschini remarked that “Europe is an important producer and consumer of cultural content.”

Indeed, as Minister Franceschini stated at the Cartier/Triennale opening: “Europe is an important producer and consumer of cultural content.” 
Yes, culture is a commodity and art is a sales pitch. Their customers, the shoppers of Europe and the rest of the world, are eager to show off their huge, impressive art show catalogs as well as their gold and diamond jewelry, watches and accessories. 

The Cartier Foundation presented a version of their 2019 exhibition “We the Trees”  as “Trees”  in a lavishly renovated power station, The Power Station of Art, China’s first state-run contemporary art museum. Cartier’s show at the Power Station of Art ran through October 10th, 2021, and was orchestrated, according to Cartier’s publicity for the event: “with the complicity of the anthropologist Bruce Albert.” 

A forum at the Power Station of Art on July 8th, “The World Begins with Tree” was open to special guests and media only.
The online announcement states that: “Trees are among the oldest living organisms on the planet. Together, the different types of forest form the largest area of living matter that exists on Earth. The human race has existed for a mere 300,000 years or so, and, in comparison, is humble to these prestige masters of time and space. Equipped with sensorial abilities and communication skills, trees provide constant sources of inspiration for artistic and philosophical thinking in human society. This exhibition is curated to echo the concept of a ‘botanical revolution’, where a fresh look is introduced to these ancient creatures that surround us. We should give trees their rightful place and respect, and consider them a true partner in our shared world.
July 8th, we invite curators of this exhibition Hervé Chandès, Gong Yan and Fei Dawei, and the participating artists Hu Liu and Fabrice Hyber, along with the philosopher Emanuele Coccia to walk us through this continuously mentioned, but never really comprehended ‘Nature’. 
‘Art’ is our vehicle to amplify the voice of the trees – a tonic in the chant of all living beings – once again.” – Emanuele Coccia

2022 – “Claudia Andujar – The Yanomami Struggle” was shown in Switzerland at the Fotomuseum Winterthur through February 13 2022.
The publicity mentioned that the exhibition was planned as an international collaboration with the Fondation Cartier in Paris, the Triennale Milano, etc.
Decidedly, “Art” is the ideal vehicle to amplify the voice of, as Hervé Chandès termed it, “communications for the Cartier company”, and Cartier never misses an opportunity to affix their name to “Yanomami” and “Art”…

The Fondation Cartier presented yet another “nature” oriented exhibition Les Vivants (Living Worlds) as part of lille3000, Utopia. – « Utopia »? at the Tripostal in Lille, France through October 2, 2022 that featured Jaider Esbell’s work.

(In Thomas More’s “Utopia,” published in 1516, gold and precious stones have no value. Indeed, they carry the weight of blood, slavery and human madness…)

Before his death, Jaider Esbell had hoped to organize an Indigenous art ecology in parallel to the institutions and galleries that developed from colonialism and capitalism because: “They want to flourish, fantasize and disguise, distort, soften our words. We are in this fight, a fight for life, for our territory.”  Jaider Esbell defined himself as an ‘artivist’ and used his creative genius to express a militant critique of the hegemonic culture of colonization and its concept of art as a weapon in the struggle for Indigenous rights to land and cultural recognition. 

The curators of this exhibition were Bruce Albert, anthropologist and consultant for Cartier and Hervé Chandès, Artistic General Director of the Cartier Foundation. They stated: “thus extends a series of exhibitions by the Fondation Cartier questioning the place that Western man has arrogated to himself at the top of an alleged pyramid of the living and peoples.” According to the Cartier Foundation, the exhibition “proposes to transport our imagination beyond anthropocentrism in order to reinvent, with empathy and humility, a new earthly cohabitation with plants and animals.” They added that “The heart of the exhibition is a collection of works by contemporary Amerindian artists… Their experience of a relationship of parity between living beings, humans and non-humans, constitutes an immemorial tradition from which we have everything to learn in this time of ecological crisis.” And that the Cartier Foundation “has been developing a program for more than twenty years that explores the major current ecological issues… which invite us to take a renewed look at the beauty and vulnerability of the living world.” 

The gold industry is the absolute epitome of capitalism. Utopia? Ecology? Really?

2023 – The Cartier Foundation is presenting another “The Yanomami Struggle” art show at The Shed, Hudson Yards, in NY through April 16, 2023.  The fact that the Cartier gold and diamond trinkets shop is in the same shopping complex as the Shed where the Cartier show is held puts this event in an entirely new dimension than any of their previous shows.

According to the New York Times “Hudson Yards Is a Gilded City Straight Out of a Billionaire’s Fantasy” and in another article “If You Gild It, Will They Come?”

According to Thyago Nogueira, curator of the exhibition: “At a time when the Amazon is once again threatened by uncontrolled development, deforestation and illegal mining, this exhibit presents a complex history of violence and resistance. Art serves here as a platform to give voice to the Yanomami and highlight our responsibility in the humanitarian and environmental crisis that threatens Indigenous societies all over the world.”

And as per the announcement for The Shed: “continue to raise visibility for their struggle to protect their land, people, and culture.” 

I’m continually more convinced that the preeminent expression of irony is the lofty promotional narratives of Cartier for their art shows… There will be several other occasions this year to evaluate my theory: the Cartier Foundation announced that: “In 2023, the Cartier Foundation continues to travel the world and hopes to meet you in Paris, New York, Milan, San Francisco and Shanghai.”

Brazil’s ex-president Bolsonaro has been formally accused of genocide of the Yanomami as of February 2023, but he is not the only one who is guilty…

For over five centuries, Indigenous people, trees and the rest of nature in colonized countries have paid the price for the relentless avidity for gold, diamonds and other luxury items. 
Thousands of rainforest trees must be uprooted, hundreds of tons of soil excavated and mixed with dozens of tons of toxic environmental pollutants (producing one pound of gold requires approximately six pounds of mercury) that contaminate Indigenous land and water sources for that one special gold ring…

“Art Sponsorship” is a discursive attempt to transform reality and turn our focus from one context to another. “Communications” are exercises in storytelling, in myth; extolling the merits of specific brands. These publicities are accompanied by fictions, which help to defuse the true character of a business model in order to forge a series of positive associations in the collective imagination. The story finds its happy end with the “image transfer” and the product achieves legitimacy. 
Unfortunately, for the Cartier storyline which depends on the Yanomami and even more unfortunately for the Yanomami, the destruction of their territory for the gold industry which poisons the water, soil and people with mercury, diseases spread by gold miners causing Yanomami deaths from coronavirus and malaria, Yanomami deaths from bullets fired by violent miners’ guns in even the most remote areas and now over 570 Yanomami children under the age of five having died in the past four years from preventable diseases which are directly linked to gold mining – a genocide – are becoming increasingly difficult to turn into a enchanting fantasy…

Why did I mention the ONG Survival above?
You can read about that here:

21st Century COLONIALISM – implemented by Corporations and NGOs? Whose Survival is at stake here, Survival? The survival of the rainforests and Indigenous peoples or of Cartier and others in the gold and diamond jewelry industry? – If you plan to donate to an NGO, please read this first! – update 2023

I haven’t seen the film advertised above, but for me this image evokes “Nature” being erased and exploding in flames…

A Cartier sign hangs on the side entrance to its 5th Avenue building, Monday, Feb. 27, 2023, in New York. Cartier took an image down from its website that showed Indigenous children playing in a field of tall, green grass. (Cartier image below) The French luxury jewelry brand said it was working to promote the culture of the Indigenous people and protect the rainforest. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

“Cartier uses images of Amazon tribe devastated by illegal gold mining. Critics call that hypocrisy”

By Fabiano Maisonnave

Please read the AP article here:

Please Boycott Gold! Please Boycott ALL products from deforestation; gold, palm oil, exotic wood, gemstones, soy, beef, leather, etc!