Yanomami observing gold mining site in their territory – photo of Yanomami, Alto Orinoco, Amazonas, Venezuela and photo montage – Barbara Crane Navarro
PLEASE LISTEN TO THE YANOMAMI SHAMAN’S MESSAGE – THE PLEA OF THE RAINFOREST! –« Hey – Look at me! We see you! We tried to show you! You never bothered to learn our language! You were always looking down! We’ve been warning you since the beginning! The land is alive! This land can’t be owned! This land is us! All of us! You wanted the stones! The Gold! Your shiny things! Titles – Flags – Profits! You called that progress! We tried to teach you! 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! Five centuries! You never looked up to discover what we were holding in place The sky itself! Your cities can see it! Your crops can see it! Your kids can see it! We can see it in your lungs! Take a deep breath! Open your eyes and look up! Can you finally see it ? Help the Yanomami hold up the sky! PLEASE SAY NO to GOLD !And please buy products that don’t destroy Nature and indigenous lives !(This video contains flashing images – viewer discretion is advised):
About Barbara Crane Navarro - Rainforest Art Project
I'm a French artist living near Paris.
From 1968 to 1973 I studied at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island, then at the San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, California, for my BFA.
My work for many decades has been informed and inspired by time spent with indigenous communities. Various study trips devoted to the exploration of techniques and natural pigments took me originally to the Dogon of Mali, West Africa, and subsequently to Yanomami communities in Venezuela and Brazil.
Over many years, during the winters, I studied the techniques of traditional Bogolan painting. Hand woven fabric is dyed with boiled bark from the Wolo tree or crushed leaves from other trees, then painted with mud from the Niger river which oxidizes in contact with the dye.
Through the Dogon and the Yanomami, my interest in the multiplicity of techniques and supports for aesthetic expression influenced my artistic practice. The voyages to the Amazon Rainforest have informed several series of paintings created while living among the Yanomami. The support used is roughly woven canvas prepared with acrylic medium then textured with a mixture of sand from the river bank and lava. This supple canvas is then rolled and transported on expeditions into the forest. They are then painted using a mixture of acrylic colors and Achiote and Genipap, the vegetal pigments used by the Yanomami for their ritual body paintings and on practical and shamanic implements.
My concern for the ongoing devastation of the Amazon Rainforest has inspired my films and installation projects. Since 2005, I've created a perfomance and film project - Fire Sculpture - to bring urgent attention to Rainforest issues. To protest against the continuing destruction, I've publicly set fire to my totemic sculptures. These burning sculptures symbolize the degradation of nature and the annihilation of indigenous cultures that depend on the forest for their survival.
Barbara Crane Navarro 